Category Archives: private art collections

Changes abound for the upcoming Miami Art Basel week 2015. The NADA Art Fair has a new home – the spectacular billion dollar upgraded historic Fontainbleau Hotel. In all previous locations the fair was free to enter – no more; it now $20 a head. The Rubell Family Collection stays in the forefront of the pulse of the artworld with an all woman artists exhibition that will rotate works over the duration of the show. The Marguiles Warehouse will feature a massive four custom built room exhibition of the work of Anselm Kiefer, whose retrospective I saw at the Royal Academy in London in the fall of 2014. The ICA Miami will be getting its new building in 2017 – meanwhile it will have a show of the NYC video artist Alex Bag. The de la Cruz Collection is doing a survey show loaded with art stars working in abstraction. With NADA, Scope, Pulse all having returned to Miami Beach, the major art fair action on the Miami side is now Art Miami and its Context Art Fair. Miami Projects has also moved to Miami Beach into the Deauville Hotel, which NADA just left after last year. Also up will be three stellar shows at Mana Contemporary – including the Frederick Weisman art foundation in Los Angeles, a selection of the Jorge Perez collection, and a selection of Latin America art. There will also be work from artists working in Bushwick. The other major offering will be the exhibition of representational and realist art curated by Jeffrey Deitch and Larry Gagosian that will be in the Moore Building in Miami’s white-hot Design District, and the Nari Ward retrospective at the Perez Art Museum, now under the direction of Franklin Sirmans. Isaac Julien’s 15 screen video project commission for Rolls Royce makes its North American debut at Young Arts in Wynnwood.

Miami has a couple of new gallery districts – Little River and Little Haiti, that offer warehouse sized exhibition spaces.

Up the road we can look forward to the opening of the Faena Arts Center in Miami Beach, the new ICA Miami building, and the Museum of Latin American art by Miami gallerist Gary Nader.

Vincent Johnson is an artist and writer in Los Angeles. he recently interviewed William Pope L. at MoCA in Los Angeles for the November 2015, 15th Anniversary issue of FROG magazine.

Art Basel 2015 Sketch Book: 8 Artists to Watch

By Galena Mosovich | Miami.com

Created 12/02/2015 – 20:27

Original sketches by eight Miami-based artists who are making an impact during Miami Art Week

As a cadre of the world’s best artists and art aficionados converge in Miami, it’s easy to gloss over the local talent pool. To combat this marginalization, we honed in on the consequential careers of eight local artists, who embody the city’s distinct language of creativity. We asked them to create a unique sketch for our first Miami.com Art Basel Sketch Book.

In his own words: My body of work is, and will be, a group of associated ideas constructed over the next ten years. This includes a working particle accelerator and launching a satellite into Low Earth Orbit (LEO).Why he’s hot: Farooq is taking a childhood pastime to the next level with the creation of a functional paper airplane. In this case, it’s a full-scale replica— 102 percent-to-scale, to be exact— of the Soviet-made MiG-21 fighter jet. As the son of a civil engineer, Farooq juggled his artistic inclinations with a knack for technical skills in the territories of welding, electronics and the theoretical frameworks behind working machinery.

Where to find him now: Farooq’s studio is included in the official Art Basel Artist Studio Visits (open to ABMB VIP cardholders).
Future happenings: The reveal of his 4,000-pound paper plane is slated for 2016.

In her own words: I’m a multimedia artist who explores ideas through sculpture with felt as well as collage and printmaking.Why she’s hot: Pratorius’ use of hand-cut felt is spontaneous and mysterious. She doesn’t set the forms before installation, and this technique allows for the material’s “inherent sensuality” to express itself in the sculpture. Her pieces argue against permanence, as they can never be repeated once removed from the wall or space.
Where to find her now: Pratorius’ work is on display with Miami’s Independent Thinkers at Scope Art Fair, Miami Beach; with Cancio Contemporary at Aqua Art Fair, Miami Beach; and in “100+ Degrees in the Shade: A Survey of South Florida Art” at Laundromat Art Space, 5900 NE 2nd Ave., Miami.
Future happenings: Solo show at &Gallery in Miami, Feb. 2016.

In his own words: I create in the genre of photo and hyperrealism, a style dedicated to giving the viewer a closer look.
Why he’s hot: This rising star artist also happens to be a successful music producer, whose work is closely linked to Timbaland and Missy Elliott. He started teaching himself to paint a few years ago with a focus on making random and saccharine objects seem grander through sharp lines and vibrant colors. While deeply influenced by Jeff Koons, Wizz Dumb’s style of pop art is sweeter and less irreverent — for now.

Where to find him now: Search Instagram for @wizz_dumb_art.

Future happenings: Wizz Dumb’s work will be on view at The Taplin Gallery at Miami Country Day School in Miami Shores, Feb. – April 2016.

In his own words: I’d rather be hungry in the jungle than fed up in the zoo. My work is dimensional, layered, painterly and shows a cohesive yet multifaceted range.Why he’s hot: Fila parlayed his top-notch education from Design and Architecture Senior High (DASH) in the Design District and Columbus College of Art and Design into a dynamic career as an artist. He’s considered an OG of the Miami street art scene, under the moniker “Krave” (Erin, Sunbather, The Fresh Monkey), yet his animations, urban sculptures and figurative to abstract paintings on wood are also quite popular amongst collectors and corporations.

Where to find him now: Fila will paint live Saturday, Dec. 5 during an intimate event with Locos por Juana at El Fresco, his project space/gallery in Little Havana (535 SW 12th Ave., Miami). 8 p.m. Tickets are $24. RSVP to http://www.estamosjuntos.splashthat.com.

Future happenings: Fila will start his national mural campaign in the coming months in North Carolina and Oregon.

In her own words: My work explores how technology and the Internet affects our identities, lives and experiences.

Why she’s hot: Mayer’s oeuvre is highly in tune with the digital age.

Through videos, online experiences, photography, telephone numbers, performance, sculpture and installation, her work investigates the tension between physical and digital statements of identity. This summer, Mayer’s work graced the cover of Ocean Drive magazine; the featured piece was auctioned off to support Locust Projects, the Design District exhibition space that launched her career.
Where to find her now: Mayer’s work is on view in “Spirit Your Mind,” a group exhibition presented by Chalet Society and Locust Projects at Free Spirits Sports Cafe, 100 21st St., Miami Beach.

Future happenings: Solo shows in 2016 at LAX ART in Los Angeles and David Castillo Gallery in Miami. A TV pilot created with Lucas Leyva, co-founder of the Borscht Film Festival, is in the works for Time-Warner.

In his own words: “I like my sugar with coffee and cream.” – Beastie BoysWhy he’s hot: In 2013, Vanity Fair selected Drain to participate in the Greatest Living Artists Survey, a poll in which the magazine asked 14 key artists— including Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra and Jeff Koons— to list their favorite contemporaries. Drain’s number one was Jasper Johns. His mesmerizing abstract textile sculptures typically evoke the innocence of youth held up by masterful construction. (And, he knits!) The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) also holds a few of his paper pieces in its permanent collection.
Where to find him now: The Standard Spa, Miami Beach and The Posters celebrate the hotel’s 10-year anniversary with a specially commissioned poster by Drain. The poster, with his signature low-res look, is $55 at The Shop inside the hotel (a portion of the proceeds will benefit Miami Children’s Museum). New York’s Printed Matter independent bookstore and gallery is showing Drain’s work in a shared booth with Art Metropole from Toronto at Art Basel in the Miami Beach Convention Center (Entrance Hall B, booth T3).

Future happenings: Drain’s Pleated Gnomon Sundial at Key Biscayne’s Village Green will be completed by the end of the month.

In his own words: A painterly language of strong, broken color and aggressive mark-making that connects to and illustrates the attitude and energy of the subject.Why he’s hot: Vasquez introduces the viewer to the neighborhood street gang from the perspective of a young boy looking for a role model in the absence of a father figure. The gang becomes the worldview and his paintings, collages and installations illuminate the subjects’ frenzied search for identity, community and masculinity in the most unexpected places (read: the walls of a museum or gallery).
Where to find him now: Vasquez’s work is included in the “No Commissions” Art Fair presented by Swizz Beats at The Dean Collection, 35 NE 29th St., Miami and in “100+ Degrees in the Shade: A Survey of South Florida Art” at the venue in the Design District (3900 N. Miami Ave., Miami).

Future happenings: The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition “Portraiture Now: Staging the Self” is on view at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico through March 27, 2016. In collaboration with the Aesthetics and Values class at Florida International University, Vasquez will exhibit at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Museum of Art next spring.

Yves Behar is the recipient of the 2015 Design Miami “Design Visionary Award” and he’ll be honored with a special exhibit in the D/M venue behind the convention center through December 6. The VIP preview is today, December 1st. A student team from Harvard was chosen to design the fair’s entrance for their submission, “UNBUILT,” a collection of foam models of unrealized design projects. Expect thirty five exhibitors inside including Firma Casa from Brazil, showing new works by the Campana Brothers, and Italian gallery Secondome, with hand-crafted limited editions.

The Miami Project is also launching a new spin-off this year called SATELLITE that will show various “experimental” projects in unoccupied properties up near their 73rd Street base. One of those, “Artist-Run,” will fill the rooms in the Ocean Terrace Hotel (7410 Ocean Terrace, Miami Beach) with different installations from 40 artist-run spaces, curated by Tiger Strikes Asteroid. It’s open from December 2nd to 6th, with a VIP/media event today, December 1st, from noon to 10 p.m. ALSO: Trans-Pecos, the music venue out in Queens, New York, and Sam Hillmer from the band Zs, are putting together a 5-day music program in the North Beach Amphitheater, emphasizing “musical practitioners with some form of art practice.”

X Contemporary launches their inaugural fair in Wynwood running from December 2nd through Sunday, and a VIP opening on December 1st from 5 to 10 p.m. Twenty eight exhibitiors will be on hand, plus special projects including “Grace Hartigan: 1960 – 1965” presented by Michael Klein Arts; a look at the “genesis of street art” curated by Pamela Willoughby; and “Colombia N.O.W.” presented by TIMEBAG.

Target Too InstallationPULSE Miami Beach returns to Indian Beach Park (4601 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach) starting with a big “Opening Celebration” at 4 p.m. today, December 1st, featuring a panel discussion put together by Hyperallergic; an interactive piece by Kate Durbin called “Hello, Selfie!” and a live performance by Kalup Linzy. On December 5th, PULSE celebrates the City of Miami via a talk at 5 p.m. on “Future Visions of Miami” and a “Sunset Celebration” from 5 to 7 p.m. Fair visitors can check out “TARGET TOO,” an installation referencing items sold at the stores, originally on view in NYC last March. There’s a complimentary shuttle from the convention center, and the fair is open daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Saturday.

Wynwood Walls (2520 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami) has a lot planned this year including “Walls of Change” with 14 new murals and installations and the debut of a new adjacent space called “The Wynwood Walls Garden.” The walls are by Case, Crash, Cryptik, el Seed, Erenest Zacharevic, Fafi, Hueman, INTI, The London Police, Logan Hicks and Ryan McGinness. Over in the “garden,” the Spanish art duo Pichi & Avo are doing a mural on stacked shipping containers and in the events space, Magnus Sodamin will be painting the floors and walls. The VIP opening is on December 1st in the early evening, but then it’s open to the public from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. Goldman Properties’ CEO Jessica Goldman Srebnick talks about how art transformed the Wynwood neighborhood in THIS Miami New Times piece. We also hear that New York developer (and owner of Moishe’s Moving, Mana Contemporary etc.) Moishe Mana is planning a new mixed-use development on his 30 acres of land in the middle of Wynwood.

Jeffrey Deitch and Larry Gagosian are co-presenting an exhibition of figurative painting and sculpture called “UnRealism” at 191 NE 40th Street, Miami. The opening is on Tuesday, December 1st, but it will be on view all week. According to the NYT, artists featured in the group show will include Urs Fischer, Elizabeth Peyton, John Currin and David Salle. In conjunction with the exhibition, the artist Rashaad Newsome will lead an “art parade” starting at 6:30 p.m. today at 23 NE 41st Street, Miami and ending at 4001 NE 41st Street.

CONTEXT Art Miami will feature 95 international galleries this year, along with several artist projects and installations including 12 listening stations dedicated to sound art; areas dedicated to art from Berlin and Korea; solo exhibitions by Jung San, Satoru Tamura, Mr. Herget and four others; and a “fast-track” portrait project of workers at Miami International Airport. Context and Art Miami — celebrating its 26th year — open with a VIP preview benefiting the Perez Art Museum Miami on Tuesday, December 1, 5:30 to 10 p.m., at 2901 NE 1st Avenue in Midtown, Miami. The fair is open to the public from December 2nd through the 6th.

ICA Miami (4040 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami) opens a major survey of works by the video and performance artist Alex Bag — including her interactive installation “The Van” — on December 1st. The museum recently announced the appointment of Ellen Salpeter, Deputy Director of NYC’s Jewish Museum, as its new director and they’ve just broken ground on a new, permanent home in the Design District. The 37,500 -square-foot building was designed by the Spanish firm Aranguren & Gallegos Arquitectos and is scheduled to open in 2017. Shannon Ebner also has a show, “A Public Character,” on view in the museum during AB/MB and up until January 16, 2016. This is the inaugural program in the museum’s new performance series.

The fourth edition of UNTITLED Miami is on the beach at Ocean Drive and 12th Street from December 2 to 6, with a big VIP preview on December 1st from 4 to 8 p.m. They’ve got 119 international galleries along with non-profit orgs from 20 countries. New this year will be an UNTITLED radio station broadcasting via local Wynwood Radio with interviews, performances and playlists by artists, curators etc.

PAPER Magazine is hosting (and participating in) several events during AB/MB. On Tuesday, December 1st, 6 p.m., David Hershkovits will be “in conversation” with Fab 5 Freddy and David Koh on the topic, “Art On Film,” followed by a special screening of Koh’s film “Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict.” The Tribeca Film Festival Shortlist is presenting the event at The Miami Edition (2901 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach) and SOTO sake sponsors. On Tuesday night (late) and also at the EDITION, PAPER, Silencio, A Hotel Life and One Management host the one year anniversary of the hotel’s BASEMENT nightclub with DJs Seth Troxler, Nicolas Matar and Orazio Rispo.

The Wolfsonsonian FIU Museum (1001 Washington Avenue, South Beach) is open all week with several exhibitions including “An Artist on the Eastern Front: Feliks Topolski 1941,” “Margin of Error,” “Orange Oratory,” “Philodendrum” and “Miami Beach.”

Moishe Mana’s Mana Contemporary (318 NW 23rd Street, Miami) in Wynwood plans several exhibitions during AB/MB including “Made in California,” featuring selections from L.A. collector Frederick R. Weisman’s Art Foundation; “A Sense of Place,” with over 60 works from the collection of Jorge M. Perez; and “Everything You Are Not,” key works of Latin American art from the Tiroche DeLeon collection. All are up from December 3rd thru the 6th, with a VIP preview on December 1st. Mana Urban Arts is also doing a collab with The Bushwick Collective at the former RC Cola Plant (550 NW 24th Street, Miami) that includes over 50 artists — so far the list includes Ghost, GIZ, Pixel Pancho, Case Maclaim and Shok-1 — plus skateboarding, DJs, live music etc.

Bortolami Gallery is opening a year-long exhibition called “Miami” by the French conceptual artist Daniel Buren on December 1st in the M Building (194 NW 30th Street, Miami). The show marks the 50th anniversary of his works with fabric and the 8.7 cm stripe. By periodically installing new works, Buren will also alter the exhibition during the year.

Previewing their upcoming South Beach studio, SoulCycle will pop-up poolside at the 1 Hotel (2341 Collins Avenue, South Beach) starting on Tuesday, December 1st. They plan to open permanently in the hotel in January 2016. The 1 Hotel also offers a fitness and wellness line-up for guests and visitors all week.

Miami gallery Locust Projects (3852 N. Miami Avenue, Miami) returns with their “Art on the Move” series of artists’ projects in public spaces around Miami during December. This year’s work, “NITE LIFE,” by LA-based artist Martine Syms, includes a series of prints displayed on the backs of buses and at bus stops, based on “Chitlin’ Circuit” concert posters by Clyde Killens. There’s a reception for the project, curated by PAMM’s director Franklin Sirmans, on December 1st, 7 to 10 p.m. Also check out the gallery’s site-specific installation “PORE” by Martha Friedman and “Beatriz Monteavaro: Nochebuena” in the project room.

Brickell City Centre (750 South Miami Avenue, Miami) is giving a sneak peek at their work-in-progress development in downtown Miami with an invite-only event, “Illuminate the Night,” on December 1st featuring the unveiling of “Dancers,” a sculpture by UK artist Allen Jones; () music from Wooden Wisdom DJs (Elijah Wood and Zach Cowie) and a 150,000 square-foot glass, steel and fabric structure called “Climate Ribbon” by Hugh Dutton.

The Bass Museum (2100 Collins Avenue, South Beach) is closed for renovations until next year, but they’re still hosting “outdoor activations” in the surrounding park including the AB/MB PUBLIC sector and the display of a neon sign, “Eternity Now,” by Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury. They are co-hosting a private dinner with Salon 94 Gallery on Tuesday in the Miami Beach EDITION Hotel.

Zurich’s Galerie Gmurzynska hosts an invite-only cocktail party at The Villa Casa Casuarina (1116 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach) on December 1, with Sylvester Stallone and Germano Celant. The gallery will be showing a retrospective of works by Karl Lagerfield in their stand at AB/MB, curated by Celant.

The DREAM South Beach (1111 Collins Avenue, South Beach) hooked-up with Brooklyn-based artist — and new GQ “style guy” — Mark Anthony Green for an exhibition of, according to Green, “what 2015 meant to me in both a macro and micro sense…wins, losses, heartbreak and promotion.” The hotel will have a pop-up shop curated by the artist, and guests will get a complimentary print. There’s a welcome reception on Tuesday, a private dinner and afterparty with the Green and A$AP Rocky on Friday and a pool party hosted by YESJULZ on Sunday afternoon.

FLAUNT Magazine and Guess host a private dinner at the Nautilus Hotel in December 1 in honor of their latest cover stars Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Julie Mehretu. After dinner, there’s a poolside party with a screening of “ME” and music by the Martinez Brothers and Pusha T. Expected guests include “ME” writers Susan Taylor & Jefrey Levy and Gina Gershon.

The 2015 edition of Elle Decor’s Modern Life Concept House premieres with a VIP breakfast on December 1st at 250 Wynwood (250 NW 24th Street, Miami). Visits from December 2 to 4 are open to the public with a $35 donation to pediatric cancer research and a reservation via jacquelyn@zm-pr.com. The 6,000 square-foot home will showcase 4 leading designers selected by ED editor-in-chief Michael Boodro.

An exhibition called “LAX – MIA: Light + Space” opens on Tuesday, December 1st, 5 to 8 p.m., at the Surf Club (9011 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach). The show was curated by Terry Riley, Joachim Pissaro and John Keenan of PARALLEL and is hosted by The Surf Club and Fort Partners. It’s on view until December 12th, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, closed on Sunday.

Art Basel Basecamp (46 NW 36th Street, Miami), hosted by HGABmag, returns with a space to “re-group, re-fresh and re-energize” featuring charging stations, information booths, giveaways and art installations. Stop in from December 1 to 6, 4 p.m. to midnight daily; and don’t miss their “Alice in Wynwood” closing party on Saturday night.

The first edition of the Curatorial Program for Research Film Festival takes place on December 1, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Cannonball (1035 North Miami Avenue, Suite 300, Miami). The program, “Earthbound,” was curated by Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk in collaboration with Dwelling Projects. There will also be a silent auction.

New York-based developer Robbie Antonio debuts his REVOLUTION collection of pre-crafted structures during Design Miami/2015. The limited edition homes and pavilions have been designed by 30 noted architects and designers including Zaha Hadid, Richard Gluckman and the Campana Brothers. The VIP launch is in the Design Miami tent on Tuesday evening.

NYC club No.8 pops-up in the Rec Room at the Gale Hotel (1690 Collins Avenue, South Beach) with DJs including JusSke, Fly Guy and Ross One; the hotel’s Regent Cocktail Club features live jazz, Cuban cocktails, Samba and soul tunes. They’ve also got a digital art installation by Aerosyn Lex.

White Cube’s kick-off party is tonight at Soho Beach House with Giogio Moroder spinning and lots of Moet.

Blog

Must-See New Media at Miami Art Week

This time of the year, the whole art scene gathers in Miami to—let’s be honest—enjoy the beach, often more than the overwhelming art-filled fairs. Many of our longtime favorite creators converge at this year’s festivities, so to support their efforts, we’ve compiled a coup d’oeil of some quality digital art happenings.

Swapping its successful one-shot hypersalon satellite project for a PULSE Miami Beach booth, TRANSFER gallery offers a more streamlined way to reach a wider audience. “The collaborative experiment that was hypersalon set in motion so many amazing exhibitions and exchanges that unfolded in the past year. But in the end, we managed to create a mostly non-commercial format amidst the biggest feeding frenzy of the commercial art world—not a sustainable project in the ABMB environment,” Kelani Nichole, founder and director of TRANSFER tells The Creators Project.

“This year, I went for the exact opposite, securing a white cube in a tent on the beach. TRANSFER is quite fortunate to have the support of PULSE to open their fair to a challenging format of social-media based performance, and their Conversations curated section gave us the perfect opportunity to present two artists working with issues of technology and the body,” Nichole adds. TRANSFER showcases recent works by Faith Holland and Kate Durbin with support from Giovanna Olmos. Both artists will be taking part in panels and screenings.

Holland brings her orgasm-inspired and cumshot-generated bodies of works—including her figurative and dynamic Visual Orgasms GIF series and juicy abstract Ookie Canvas paintings, comprising a never-seen-before composition called Peter North. Kate Durbin will present video pieces created from footage of previous iterations of Hello!Selfie, a social media-rooted performance that explores and questions selfie culture in public spaces.

On the other side of the bay, Wynwood-located X-contemporary provides viewers with a bunch of activities ranging from panel discussions, art, and DJ performances, to one-of-a-kind projects in addition to the many artworks showcased by the 30 or so worldwide exhibitors.

“bitforms gallery has been a part of the contemporary art world for 14 years,” Steven Sacks, director and owner of bitforms gallery tells us.“We have a very specific focus on new media artists covering a wide range of generations and media types.” His booth brings an impressive roster of artworks by artists such as Manfred Mohr, Daniel Canogar, Jonathan Monaghan, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Sara Ludy, and Quayola, artists who all strongly contribute to the solidification of new media art within the ruthless contemporary art landscape.

“The art fairs are an amazing place to reach thousands of art-centric people and introduce and educate them about our unique program, which typically does stand out amongst more traditional galleries. UNTITLED art fair is a smaller, curated fair with more experimental artists, compared to the larger Art Basel fair, which has a lot more traditional art,” Sacks concludes.

Chic Report

The Definitive Guide to Art Basel Miami 2015, Part One

So you’ve made it to MIA for Art Basel 2015, but have you secured a coveted spot on the event’s hautest guest lists? Fear not—we’ve got intel on all the can’t-miss pop-ups, star-studded bashes, and gallery celebrations of the week. Check back for part deux, tomorrow. We hope you remembered to pack your VIP card with your sunnies…

Locust Projects Celebrates “Martha Friedman: Pore”Intel: The nonprofit space Locust Projects is hosting a cocktail reception celebrating Martha Friedman’s new site-specific installation Pore, which includes four sculptures made from 1,000 pounds of rubber (they’re attached to costumes that will be activated during an experimental performance by dancer Silas Reiner).
Logistics: 3852 North Miami Avenue, 7-10 p.m.

Brickell City Centre BashIntel: Brickell City Centre is transforming one block of its three-block construction site into an event space. Wooden Wisdom (Elijah Wood + Zach Cowie) will set the vibe. VIPs and local influencers will join Brickell for a lighting ceremony of its newly completed Climate Ribbon (150,000-square-foot glass, steel and fabric by designer Hugh Dutton).Location: Brickell City Centre, 67 SW 8th St., 7 p.m. RSVP to Brickellcitycentre@taraink.com

Boho Hunter Basel Kick OffIntel: Monica Sordo invites those in MIA to visit Boho Hunter for cocktails, music by Bea Pernia, and a selection of her collection with sales to benefit The Duerme Tranquilo Foundation.Location: Boho Hunter, 184 NW 27th St., 7-10 p.m.

Tribeca Shortlist “Art on Film”Intel: The movie streaming service from Lionsgate and Tribeca Enterprises hosts “Art on Film” with hip hop pioneer, visual artist and filmmaker Fab 5 Freddy (Fred Brathwaite), independent producer David Koh (Submarine Entertainment) and moderated by PAPER Magazine founder/editor David Hershkovits. Following will be a special screening of the film Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict.Location: The Miami Beach EDITION, 2901 Collins Ave., 6 p.m. RSVP to rsvp@tribecashortlist.com

PAMM Presents: Dimensions, by Devonté Hynes and Ryan McNamaraIntel: Flock to Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) for a one night only performance by Ryan McNamara and Devonté (“Dev”) Hynes, including an original multi-part composition by Hynes, an internationally-acclaimed musician and producer, and sculptural elements and choreography by McNamara, a celebrated performance artistLocation: 1103 Biscayne Boulevard, 9 p.m. to midnight

Brown Jordan and SunbrellaIntel:The two join photographer Gray Malin for a celebration of art, design and travel, for a first look at the new Miami Design District flagship, an 8,600 square-foot, three-level store of re-imagined native Florida materials, which officially opens January 2016. The event will serve as a “first look” and the store will officially open in January 2016.Location: 3650 North Miami Avenue

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Partner \A Guide to Art Basel: The Must-see Shows and Showcases
Now in its 14th year, Art Basel is bigger and swankier than ever before
Presented By //
T.M. Brown // December 1, 2015

Every year around this time, thousands of dealers, buyers, artists, and scenesters descend on South Florida for Art Basel Miami. Now in its 14th year, the stateside spinoff of the Swiss art fair—and let’s be honest, calling Art Basel an art fair is like calling the Pope a priest—is bigger and swankier than ever before, attracting galleries from all over the globe and providing one of the world’s biggest stages for upcoming artists.

Before we get to all the shows you should be heading to while you’re in Miami, we here at SPIN want to hook you up with an exclusive invitation to K-PAX, a launch event to showcase the collaboration between PAX + K-HOLE, on the rooftop of the Gale South Beach this Friday, December 4th at 5:00 PM, brought to you by the folks at PAX vaporizers.

If SXSW moved to Berlin for a year, started wearing a lot of Acne and Gosha Rubchinskiy, and got really into DJ Rashad and Rødhåd, you’d have III Points. The three-year old art, tech, and music festival is quickly becoming a compulsory event for people who have traditionally flocked to Austin in March, so when they decide to throw a three-night concert series in the middle of Art Basel, you know it’s going to be good.

Life and Death Showcase with Richie Hawtin (Thursday, December 3 at 9:00 PM)

III Points Art Basel’s opening night brings iconic label Life and Death to Miami for the fourth time in as many years and the Italian powerhouse did not disappoint with its lineup. The showcase at Mana Wynwood brings Tale of Us, Mind Against, and Thugfucker to the DJ booth, providing a collection of artists that weave the worlds of pop, house, funk, and disco into a singular soundtrack. Oh, and techno legend Richie Hawtin just announced he’ll be joining the Life and Death crew as a special guest so those tickets are going to be hard to come by.

Jamie XX and Four Tet (Friday, December 4 at 9:00 PM)

Jamie xx and Four Tet combine forces once again to provide the centerpiece of III Points concert series. If you haven’t heard what these boys can do when they’re in the booth together, listen to their exceptional BBC One Essential Mix from March and prepare to be blown away by the effortless combination of everything from jungle to electro pop to soul into one smooth set. Both are finishing years filled with international acclaim so this set will be something of a victory lap and we’re all the richer for it.

A$AP Rocky and Kaytranada (Saturday, December 5 at 9:00 PM)

A$AP Rocky and Kaytranada close out the III Points concert series but this Saturday night set is anything but a come down. Rocky is fresh off a huge year including his sophomore release At. Long. Long. Last. ASAP and rumors that he’s working on a project with Kanye West, while Kaytranada has been pounding the DJ circuit, plying his funky house trade at every club worth its salt the world over. Both should be in rare form at Mana Wynwood.

By far the best name of any party happening in Miami during Art Basel week—or any party in any city during any other week—the yearly shindig is bringing Kim Ann Foxman, Justin Strauss, and Miami Players Club to the Electric Pickle in Wynwood for a suite of DJ sets mixing deep house tracks with just the right amount of tropical groove. To cap the night off, Miami staples Psychic Mirrors will be playing one of their legendary live sets, mixing together soul, funk, and psychedelic sounds into something singularly South Beach.

Ever wanted to see Shamir perform while surrounded by an “immersive” 3000 square foot chandelier designed by the Miami-born, Brooklyn-based artist Diego Montoya? Yeah, that’s what I thought. The minds at Superfine! have put together another expertly curated series of concerts in tandem with their impeccable for contemporary art and design. This time around they’ve brought in Shamir—fresh off his acclaimed debut album Ratchet—for a performance that is larger than life. Literally. That chandelier is going to be huge.

Green Velvet and Tiga (Friday, December 4th at Trade at 11:00 PM)

Any show featuring Green Velvet promises to be as strange as it is fantastic. Techno’s resident oddball is ready to take on Miami alongside Tiga, a 1-2 punch that will satisfy hardcore techno purists and newcomers alike. This show is flying slightly under the radar but don’t sleep on it, these two are the real deal.

DJ Mustard and Fabolous (Saturday, December 5th at Toejam Backlot at 9:00 PM)

DJ Mustard’s fingerprints have been all over the pop and hip-hop landscape for the last year and change so it makes sense that he’s the headliner at this Saturday night show. He’ll be joined by rap stalwart Fabolous for a night of throwback hits mixed with Mustard’s signature sound. RSVP at CLSoundtrack[at]fresh.guestcode.com.

The Fabulous 5.5: Art Basel Planning Guide #3

December 1, 2015

Under the Radar 2015

With dozens of places to go, thousands of things to see, and a million elbows, here are a few special spots. For those of you who make a career at this, or a career out of bragging about this, or travel to go where fewer have gone, here are 5.5 selections.

#4: Say my name; say my name: Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri. New York’s Salon 94 brings this Aboriginal Australian’s oil paintings to life mirroring textiles and mimicking sand sculpture. If you know about dreamtime, here it is in reality. Also at Art Basel.

#3: Joris Van de Moortel: This Belgian artist from Antwerp will present his solo work for the first time in the USA presented by the Denis Gardarin Gallery at UNTITLED. The art teacher’s question, “What is going on in this picture?” earns a lengthy response with works from Rotten Sun, Van de Moortel’s sculpted, painted, musical installation.

#2: Larissa Bates at NADA in the Fountainebleau. Out of Vermont, Costa Rica, St. Augustine’s Monya Rowe Gallery and ARTADIA, there is something of Italy 1450, Ubud 1980, and Tokyo 2005 in one painting, then outback, desert, and prep school in the next.

#1: Jennifer Rubell is always on point. Over the years, she has fed Miami’s Art Basel crowd breakfast a dozen times – things like oatmeal, Sun Maid raisins, yogurt, dripping honey, and massive portions of delicious creativity. This year’s food-based installation: Devotion – bread, butter, and a couple to be married later. 9-11am on December 3 at The Rubell Family Collection 95 NW 29th Street.

.5: The weather forecast is bad, on the radar, not under it.

no commision art fair and untameable house party

CASA BACARDI AT WYNWOOD CURATED BY THE DEAN COLLECTION BRINGS TO LIFE THE CREATIVE VISION OF KASSEEM DEAN (SWIZZ BEATZ) THROUGH HIS PARTNERSHIP WITH BACARDI. SWIZZ HAS PERSONALLY CURATED AN INNOVATIVE CONVERGENCE OF ART AND MUSIC DURING ART BASEL MIAMI – A THREE-DAY EXPERIENTIAL TAKEOVER SHOWCASING EMERGING ARTISTS ALONGSIDE NOTABLE A-LIST TALENT AND INCLUDES THE DEAN COLLECTION’S NO COMMISSION ART FAIR AND BACARDI’S UNTAMEABLE HOUSE PARTY CONCERT SERIES.

December 3-5

35 NE 29th St.

Miami

FL

NO COMMISSION ART FAIR FREE TO PUBLIC

OPEN DAILY 11-8PM

The North American Premiere Of Isaac Julien’s Commission For The Rolls-Royce Art Programme To Be Shown During Art Basel In Miami Beach

GOODWOOD, England, Nov. 17, 2015 — Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, in partnership with the National YoungArts Foundation, will present the North American debut of Isaac Julien’s work Stones Against Diamonds (Ice Cave) during Art Basel in Miami Beach 2015. The work by the Turner Prize nominated artist, commissioned as part of the Rolls‑Royce Art Programme, will be shown from 1-5 December 2015 at the National YoungArts Foundation ­– located at the nexus of Miami’s Wynwood Arts District, Arts and Entertainment District and Edgewater. The video installation will fill the interior of the magnificent YoungArts Jewel Box across 15 screens, the largest and most impressive presentation of the work to date.

UBS Art Collection Highlights

This year’s annual presentation of work from the UBS Art Collection explores the theme of Inside:Out, complementing and drawing inspiration from the bright, airy and sophisticated redesign of the UBS Lounge and its new hanging garden. The installation features approximately 30 works of art by 15 artists that reflect the notion of bringing the outside in, breaking down barriers between fiction and reality and between public and private space to create images inspired by fantasy, pleasure, sensation, nature and alternative landscapes. A highlight is the newly acquired Native Land (2014), a lightbox by Doug Aitken. Filled with a mosaic of colorful roadside signs, this work highlights the intrusion of advertisements in the American landscape. Additional featured artists include Vija Celmins, Francesco Clemente, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gilbert & George, Andreas Gursky, Catherine Opie, Marc Quinn, Caio Reisewitz, Gerhard Richter, Pipilotti Rist, David Schnell, Simmons & Burke, Xaviera Simmons, Thomas Struth and Corinne Wasmuht. The works, selected by UBS Art Collection Curator for the Americas Jacqueline Lewis, represent a globally diverse range of artists, themes and media, including installations, kinetic sculpture, painting, drawing and photography.

LITTLEST SISTER FAIR

Gallerist Anthony Spinello launches his Little River space with the fourth Littlest Sister, a “faux” invitation art fair featuring 10 unrepresented women-identified Miami artists in a presentation curated by Sofia Bastidas. Each artist has a solo booth; the fair also includes a sector on sound and performance presentations and a series of critical panels exploring arts and real estate, writing, design and collecting. 7221 NW Second Ave.; littlestsister.com. 8-11 p.m. Monday; noon-7 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Free.

Your All-Encompassing Guide to Miami’s Sprawling Art Scene

To the contemporary art set, Miami is a place of annual pilgrimage, where productivity and decadence play nice. Each December, gallerists, collectors, artists, and curators make their way to the palm-studded metropolis to sell their wares, mount exhibitions, and party in duds that would make Miami Vice’s Crockett and Tubbs proud. Art Basel in Miami Beach might be considered the nucleus of this activity, but with satellite fairs and ephemeral exhibitions opening in Art Deco monuments and beach bungalows alike, it’s high time to take a comprehensive look at what’s happening across the city’s sprawl, from South Beach to Little Haiti.

With guidance from four Miamians—gallerist Nina Johnson-Milewski, artist Emmett Moore, curator Diana Nawi, and collector and philanthropist Jorge Perez—we highlight the art spaces and watering holes of a city where beaches and swamps, American and Latin American traditions, and collections of rare palm trees and blue chip art collide. Our take away: even after the art-crowd’s dust settles, Miami is a mysteriously enchanting place where cultural output of all persuasions churns.

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Miami Beach

Photos by Gesi Schilling.

Edged by sherbet-hued high-rises and beaches dotted with hotel lounge chairs, this skinny strip of land—some call it a sandbar on steroids—is where Miami’s more flamboyant character traits originate. Separated from the mainland by Biscayne Bay, this is the sandy ground on which the holiest Art Deco edifices, flashiest clubs, and the smallest bathing suits consort. It’s also home to sprawling art fairs, beachside pop-up projects, old-school restaurants, and dive bars heralded by glowing neons that look like they were forged in the ’50s.

Miami Beach Convention Center, 1901 Convention Center Drive

After Art Basel expanded to Miami in 2002, settling into the Miami Beach Convention Center (between the beach and the Botanical Garden), the city quickly became an annual stop for collectors and artists. As the parent of an ever-growing brood of art fairs that crop up during the first week of December, this mainstay is the first stop for many people, thanks to its mix of booths from the biggest, bluest-chip galleries and ambitious younger spaces, curated projects, and a constant flow of programming.

Across the street from Art Basel, this sophisticated fair hosts a robust cohort of galleries focused on contemporary and historic design, from immersive architectural environments to jewel-like light fixtures that fit in the palm of your hand, created by the world’s most inspired designers—Giò Ponti, Maria Pergay, and Julie Richoz among them.

2100 COLLINS AVENUE

Though this museum, founded in 1963 and housed in an impeccably preserved Art Deco structure, is currently under renovation, conceptual artist Sylvie Fleury is hanging her site-specific Eternity Now on the building’s facade from December 1st through May 31st, 2016.

The glowing neon sign is a part of Art Basel and the Bass’s five-year-running public art collaboration in Collins Park, which is adjacent to the museum. This installment, curated by Public Art Fund’s Nicholas Baume, brings works by Sam Falls, Katharina Grosse, Jacob Kassay, and Hank Willis Thomas to the lush lawn.

D. Nautilus, a SIXTY Hotel

1825 COLLINS AVENUE

Two blocks away and right off the beach, a shiny renovation of this hotel is accompanied by activations from “Greater New York” breakout artist Mira Dancy (with a sprawling mural), Katherine Bernhardt (with a plucky fresco on the floor of one of the pools), Eddie Peake (with a mirrored rooftop installation), and other works tucked playfully into idiosyncratic spaces throughout the compound. Curated by Artsy’s Elena Soboleva, Artsy Projects: Nautilus is a collaboration between Artsy and the hotel.

E. The Standard Spa Miami Beach

40 ISLAND AVENUE

Swing by the swank Standard hotel, just off Miami Beach on Belle Isle, for a snack on its expansive deck, or pick up one of Miami-based artist Jim Drain’s limited-edition posters, released for fair week.

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South Beach

Ocean Drive and 12th Street

This curatorially driven satellite fair on the beach boasts booths by The Hole, Taymour Grahne, Steve Turner, and even Aperture Foundation. Throughout the week, performances move through the tent and its surrounding landscape. Don’t miss artist and choreographer Madeleine Hollander’s MILE, beginning each day on the east side of the structure at 4 p.m. Also on our radar is UNTITLED Radio, a series of daily radio shows that replace traditional art fair panel discussions.

801 Ocean Drive

This year marks Scope’s 15th anniversary in Miami. They bring 120 exhibitors along with curated sections Juxtapoz Presents, the Breeder Program, and FEATURE, the last featuring 10 booths that highlight new approaches to photography.

C. La Sandwicherie

229 14th Street

For a much needed dose of sustenance after a long day of fair hopping, grab a stool at La Sandwicherie’s counter, where you’ll likely devour one of their signature sandwiches—all available on a croissant in lieu of bread or bun. Wash it down with a smoothie or early evening beer. Or come back late night for a snack and hazy conversation with the post-party art crowd. It’s one of the few places in South Beach that’s open very late—until 5 a.m.

E. Wolfsonian-FIU

1001 Washington Avenue

This museum is one of the crown jewels of Miami curiosities. Founded by Miami philanthropist and passionate collector-wanderer Mitchell Wolfson in 1986 to house his ever-growing collection of decorative art and propaganda—his collecting habits famously began with a stockpile of treasured vintage hotel keys—this wunderkammer is housed in a boxy, stunningly beautiful Mediterranean Revival building. Up now, don’t miss “Margin of Error,” which takes a look at “cultural responses to mechanical mastery and engineered catastrophes of the modern age—the shipwrecks, crashes, explosions, collapses, and novel types of workplace injury that interrupt the path of progress.”

F. Puerto Sagua

700 Collins Avenue

Insider tip: For a quick, low-key, and delicious bite (don’t miss the flan), take a seat at this Cuban diner—and take home one of their fantastic paper placemats, complete with a vintage Miami map. Take note: after a kitchen fire, Puerto Sagua has temporarily closed its doors but is set to reopen on November 30th, just in time for fair week.

G / H / I. Joe’s, Milo’s, and Prime 112

11 Washington Avenue; 730 First Street; 112 Ocean Drive

Insider tip: For a longer, more luxurious meal, try one of Jorge Perez’s favorites: Joe’s for stone crabs, a local delicacy (everyone wears bibs); Milo’s for fresh fish; and Prime 112 for a nice big steak.

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North Beach

A. Faena Hotel

3201 Collins Avenue

Collector and hotelier Alan Faena’s newest complex fuses a freshly minted hotel with an ambitious art space called Faena Forum, designed by Rem Koolhaas’s OMA. While the Forum won’t open until spring 2016, its programming kicks off—and into the streets, during the first week of December, when assume vivid astro focus installs a kaleidoscopic roller-disco on the beach. It’s open to the public, who can take a spin to DJ sets.

B. EDITION Hotel

2901 Collins Avenue

While it might be best known for the long lines that amass outside its club (cool-kid magnet BASEMENT), EDITION hosts a set of diamond-in-the-rough projects in its poolside bungalows. If you can find them through the long marble lobby and stand of towering potted banana plants, Louis B. James (Bungalow 262) shows virtual reality-laced works by Jeremy Couillard, and Harper’s Books (Bungalow 252) hosts a signing with artist Sue Williams of her new, gorgeous monograph on December 2nd.

The Fontainebleau Miami Beach, 4441 Collins Avenue

Making a move from the charmingly retro Deauville Beach Resort way uptown to the high-gloss Fontainebleau marks a big shift for the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) fair, which is focused on younger galleries. From L.A.’s Anat Ebgi to Berlin’s SANDY BROWN to New York’s Karma, its exhibitors are known for bringing an inspired mix of new work into the fold.

Indian Beach Park, 4601 Collins Avenue

A couple of blocks north is another fair that’s carved a place for itself on the main drag. From mainstay galleries like Yancey Richardson to groundbreaking nonprofits like Visual AIDS and RxArt, most booths here mount focused presentations of works of two to three artists. Don’t miss the fair’s curated section, PLAY, surfacing innovative video and new media selections from idiosyncratic New York-based curator Stacy Engman.

Deauville Beach Resort, 6701 Collins Avenue

Take a cab a few minutes north, and you’ll find satellite fairs Miami Project and Art on Paper, taking NADA’s place at the Deauville Beach Resort. Also filling this hub is a dynamic selection of performance, installation, and new media interventions from SATELLITE, a multipart curatorial effort. We’re especially excited that Brooklyn bar and concert venue Trans Pecos is setting up shop there with sets by Fade to Mind and Michael Beharie, among others.

F. Sandbar Lounge

6752 Collins Avenue

Insider tip: Across the street, visit Sandbar Lounge, a sand-covered dive bar for a drink and game of pool after a long day trekking up the beach.

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Design District

As you pass across the causeway that traverses Biscayne Bay, Downtown Miami’s skyline comes into focus. Behind it lie some of the city’s most dynamic cultural spaces. You might first land in the city’s Design District, just north of highway 195, where boxy warehouses and parking garages have, in recent years, been converted into sharp design shops, art galleries, and restaurants.

4040 NE 2nd Avenue

While its new Aranguren & Gallegos Arquitectos-designed building begins construction, the one-year-old ICA brings a strong assortment of contemporary exhibitions to its temporary home. This season surfaces a solo exhibition by radical video artist Alex Bag, which Diana Nawi is keenly anticipating. For his part, Emmett Moore is looking forward to future programming: “I’m excited to see the new ICA building. They’ve managed to put on some great shows in their temporary space so I can only imagine what’s in store.”

B. de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space

23 NE 41st Street

Around the corner, visit one of Miami’s acclaimed private art collections, brought into the public sphere by Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz. This year, the group show “You’ve Got to Know the Rules…To Break Them” promises irreverent highlights from the couple’s encyclopedic holdings of today’s most influential work.Insider tip: “The private collections in Miami are amazing troves of contemporary art,” says Diana Nawi.

Since its founding in 1998, this artist-run nonprofit space has produced a steady stream of experimental projects. This month, it’s a platform for ambitious work by a bevy of young artists—sculptor Martha Friedman, choreographer Silas Riener, installation artist Beatriz Monteavaro, and conceptual artist Martine Syms.

Insider tip: And as you traverse the city, look out for Syms’s NITE LIFE—graphic prints, emblazoned with phrases like “Darling It Won’t Be The Same Always” plastered on city buses and bus stops. They resemble mid-1900s “Chitlin’ Circuit” posters, which advertised shows at venues where black musicians could perform freely and securely during segregation.

D. Jeffrey Deitch and Larry Gagosian’s “UNREALISM” at the Moore Building

191 NE 40th Street

Sometime rivals Jeffrey Deitch and Larry Gagosian embark on their first collaboration over four floors (about 28,000 square feet) of this Design District architectural gem. Their joint curatorial project, “UNREALISM,” brings together artists—from John Currin to Elizabeth Peyton to Jamian Juliano-Villani—representing a renaissance in figuration.

F. Mandolin

4312 NE 2nd Avenue

Insider tip: For lunch or dinner, try one of Nina Johnson-Milewski’s favorites, Mandolin: “It’s such a lovely atmosphere, owned and operated by the nicest people.” It also serves some of the city’s best seafood, on a hidden patio dotted with sky blue chairs and fresh flowers.

G. Michael’s Genuine

130 NE 40th Street

Insider tip: Or for heartier fare in an equally unhurried environment, grab a seat at Michael’s Genuine, opened by James Beard-honored Michael Schwartz. It’s one of Jorge Perez’s favorites. You’ll have no regrets after devouring the Harris Ranch black angus burger (don’t dare skimp on the brioche bun).

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Little Haiti / North Miami

In the 1800s, this area, north of downtown Miami, was covered with lemon groves, from which it drew its first nickname, “Lemon City.” Today, it’s defined by its Haitian immigrant population and burgeoning art scene.

6315 NW 2nd Avenue

Founded by impresario Nina Johnson-Milewski in 2007, this Miami mainstay recently moved north from Wynwood to a four-building, 15,000 square-foot compound in the heart of Little Haiti. “I’m loving our new home,” says Johnson-Milewski. “For the first time in nearly ten years I have windows and outdoor space. Who knew Vitamin D was so essential?” “Trees in Oolite,” the gallery’s first design exhibition, uses this fresh air to its full advantage. In the complex’s courtyard, brutalist furniture by Emmett Moore, Katie Stout, and Snarkitecture sits among lush mango, avocado, and oak trees. Inside, don’t miss Ann Craven’s solo show of lush skyscapes she painted en plein air in Maine, with the moon and the occasional candle as her only light sources.

7221 NW 2nd Avenue

This experimental space is up to its old boundary-pushing tricks during fair week with “Littlest Sister,” a conceptual exhibition that calls itself a “faux” art fair, with the tagline “Smallest Art Fair, Biggest Balls.” The project gathers “booths” by 10 women-identified artists, all unrepresented and working in painting, installation, new media, and performance.

C. Michael Jon Gallery

255 NE 69th Street

This gallery’s roster is chock full of up-and-coming artists from across the country—Paul Cowan, Math Bass, and JPW3, to name a few. This month, Sofia Leiby brings bright, active paintings that resemble letters and words breaking out of alphabetic confines and wiggling their way to abstraction.

D. Fiorito

5555 NE 2nd Avenue

Insider tip: Travel south past Little Haiti Park and you’ll find Fiorito, a small Argentinian restaurant that’s “a good local spot for a low key dinner,” says Emmett Moore. “I have dreams about their grilled octopus.”

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Wynwood

Wynwood has become the poster child for the rampant expansion of Miami’s art scene to the mainland, and likewise into the city’s streets. Over the last six years, murals have spread across the concrete walls of the district’s abandoned factories and warehouses. Galleries and private collections have followed suit, marking a cultural renaissance for this formerly industrial neighborhood, nicknamed “Little San Juan” for its still-vibrant Puerto Rican community.

A. Wynwood Walls

2520 NW 2nd Avenue

Pioneered by vociferous street art advocate Jeffrey Deitch, along with late real estate developer Tony Goldman, the murals that make up Wynwood Walls were some of the first carrots to draw the international art set to Wynwood in 2009. Every year, new murals are added to the colorful cohort that includes street art’s most influential names—and some of its undisputed masterworks—from Aiko to Shepard Fairey to Futura to Os Gemeos. This year, 14 new murals and installations (by Fafi, Crash, Logan Hicks, and more) are unveiled.

B. Rubell Family Collection

95 NW 29th Street

Amassed by charismatic patrons Donald and Mera Rubell, this expansive collection is housed in a monumental 45,000-square-foot space that was once owned by the Drug Enforcement Agency. This year, they present “NO MAN’S LAND,” focused on the influential output of female artists ranging from Michele Abeles and Jenny Holzer to Shinique Smith.

Insider tip: Don’t miss Jennifer Rubell’s Devotion, one of the artist’s signature interactive food-based installations that, this year, explores buttering bread as an act of intimacy and interpersonal connection, on December 3rd from 9–11 a.m.

C. The Margulies Collection at the WAREhOUSE

591 NW 27th Street

Housed in a repurposed Wynwood warehouse, this must-see private collection belongs to Miamian Martin Z. Margulies. This year, don’t miss new exhibitions of work by Anselm Kiefer and Susan Philipsz, as well as recent acquisitions of pieces by Mark Handforth, Lawrence Carroll, and more.

D. Spencer Finch’s Ice Cream Truck

3401 NE 1st Avenue

Insider tip: While strolling through the neighborhood, drop by artist Spencer Finch’s ice cream truck. “His solar-powered truck will provide anyone in the area with edible frozen works of art free of charge,” explains Jorge Perez.

3101 NE 1st Avenue

These sister art fairs, the 26-year-old Art Miami and the four-year-old Context, are must-see stops in Wynwood.

H / I. Panther Coffee, Gramps

1875 Purdy Avenue; 176 NW 24th Street

Insider tip: For a caffeine boost, pass through a the doors of a Barry McGee mural-swathed building to Panther Coffee. Or for a stiff drink among creative Miamians, try Gramps, “pretty much the only bar I got to,” says Emmett Moore. “It has a lot of the qualities of old Miami dive bars with some silly artsy stuff mixed in.”

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Park West/Downtown

Taking the southern route from Miami Beach to the mainland, across the MacArthur Causeway, you’ll land in Park West, with Downtown Miami just south of you. Here, skyscrapers house big business and club culture alike. In recent years, the adjacent waterfront, formerly monopolized by the run-down Millennium Park, has transformed into Museum Park, an impeccably manicured landscape of gardens and cultural centers.

1103 Biscayne Boulevard

This stunning museum, which opened its Herzog & de Meuron-designed doors in 2013, recently brought star curator Franklin Sirmans on as director to helm its ambitious program. This fall, don’t miss Nari Ward’s mid-career retrospective, “Sun Splashed,” curated by Diana Nawi, and Miami-based artist Nicolas Lobo’s “The Leisure Pit,” which showcases large-scale concrete sculptures, festooned with the occasional flip-flop, that he forged in a swimming pool.

B. Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation

1018 North Miami Avenue

This stunning building, its facade covered in over one million tiles that together resemble a verdant junglescape, houses patron Ella Fontanals-Cisneros’s comprehensive collection of primarily Latin American art. Up now, don’t miss Cuban artist Gustavo Pérez Monzón’s “Tramas.”

C / D / E. The Corner, NIU Kitchen, and Zuma

1035 N. Miami Avenue; 134 NE 2nd Avenue; 270 Biscayne Boulevard Way

Insider tip: For a cocktail (we recommend their Hurricane, complete with passion fruit shrub and pineapple) pop into The Corner, Diana Nawi’s “go-to bar.” For dinner, head south to NIU Kitchen’s beautiful nook for delicious Catalan fare. Or for a more dramatic dining experience, make a reservation at Zuma for elegant Japanese plates enjoyed from a perch overlooking the water.

Photo by Gesi Schilling.

—Alexxa Gotthardt

A Short List of Miami Art Week Events

Gagosian, Stallone and even Edvard Munch are bringing it this year

Miami Art Week gets a bad rap for being a nonstop rager, what with the Cristal, the caviar and the unicorn rides (trust me, Peter Brant can make that happen). But, in salute to the fact that what’s on view (I’m talking about art, not bikini models) can be just as intoxicating, we picked out just a handful of events that put the emphasis on art.
For a huge and updating list of events, see observer.com/art

MONDAY NOVEMBER 30

Isaac Julien | Commission for Rolls-Royce Art Programme in Miami for Art Basel in Miami BeachOpeningJewel Box, National YoungArts Foundation2100 Biscayne Boulevard
And we’re off! Rolls-Royce, the choice car of haughty old Englishmen and ’90s rappers, has commissioned a new work by influential British artist Isaac Julien titled Stones Against Diamonds (Ice Cave) tobe shown at the YoungArts Jewel Box as part of Art Basel Miami Beach 2015. Covering 15 screens, Mr. Julien’s tour-de-force was shot inside isolated glacial ice caves in the Vatnajökull region of Iceland. The artist interpreted this remote landscape as a metaphor for the subconscious, a place of rich beauty that can only be accessed through psychoanalysis and artistic reflection. Damn that’s deep! So if you’re rollin’ through Miami’s Wynwood District this year in your souped up KIA, maybe stop into this exhibit for a much-needed ego (and id) check.

A moon painting by Anne Craven. (Photo: Courtesy of Maccarone, New York)

Gallery DietAnn Craven’s I Like Blue Opening reception6315 NW 2nd Avenue5-8 p.m.
A teacher’s influence lasts a lifetime. Prime example: One of painter Ann Craven’s former students from a class in 2004 eventually decided to open a gallery in the Basel host-city of Miami. That student was Nina Johnson-Milewski, owner/director of Contemporary art collector favorite, Gallery Diet. Cut to 2015, and that student is about to open a show of her former teacher’s work at her new location in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Little Haiti. Ms. Craven’s painterly goodness is reason enough to see this show—she has serious chops—but this will also be the best place to find crusty die-hard Miami locals, the art lovers who run this city for more than just one week out of the year.

TUESDAY DECEMBER 1

Jarry Deigosian.

“Unrealism”Organized by Gagosian Gallery and Jeffrey DeitchMoore Building3841 NE 2nd Avenue, MiamiOpening reception 5-8 p.m.
This is kind of like when the Penguin and the Riddler teamed up for the very first time: it was fearsome yet wildly entertaining. But what has finally brought former art world foes Larry Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch together under one Design District roof? Figurative painting, of course. You just know it will be a humdinger, too, with works from both the older guard like John Currin, Elizabeth Peyton and David Salle and the very new guard, which includes young hotshots like Jamian Juliano-Vilani and Ella Kruglyanskaya. It’s all part of the evil duo’s diabolical plot to reallocate collector funds to their secret offshore lair, part of a grander scheme to take over the world… Can nothing stop them?

Yo! Adrian, Picasso, et al.

Galerie Gmurzynska ‘dinatoire’ for Germano Celant and Sylvester StalloneVilla Casa Casuarina1116 Ocean Drive8:30 p.m. Private
Guest curator Germano Celant organized the Art Basel Miami booth for this Zurich gallery with some top-notch artists (Picasso, Dubuffet, you know, the usual masterworks) and there’s a party in honor of this fact. It will be held at the sumptuous Villa Casa Casuarina, better known as the former castle-like home of the late fashion designer Gianni Versace, a.k.a. the Versace Mansion. Oh and the star of such mega-hits as Stop or My Mom Will Shoot! and Rhinestone should be making the scene…Mr. Stallone is an accomplished painter himself, f.y.i. Sadly, the event is invite only, but if you Netflix Rocky in your hotel while drinking little bottles of booze from your mini-fridge, you can convince yourself it’s more or less the same thing.

THURSDAY DECEMBER 3

NADA Miami Beach 2012 (Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Russeth)

NADA Miami Beach art fairPrivate previewFontainebleau Miami Beach 4441 Collins Avenue10 a.m.-2 p.m.
The market for emerging art is as dead as Dean Martin, right daddio? Wrong. That’s exactly what these fat cats want you to think so they can get all the primo goodies for themselves. Well, we can’t let that happen, can we? This is what you do: set four alarm clocks the night before. Print out your list of potential emerging art targets. I suggest you wear something that you can move well in (a track suit maybe) and show up to the Fontainbleau a few hours early. You might even want to wear some elbow and kneepads. The Horts are not afraid to throw an elbow or two when jockeying for position in front of the Canada gallery booth, and you shouldn’t be either. Okay, deep breath… Let’s do this.

FRIDAY DECEMBER 4

Miami meet Munch.

Edvard Munch Art AwardShelbourne Hotel South Beach1801 Collins AvenueBy invitation, or Art Basel First ChoiceVIP card
Now this is a big deal. The Edvard Munch Art Award is back after an almost 10-year hiatus, and the winner will be announced in Miami during Basel Week (yes, that thud is the sound of Munch rolling over in his grave.) The 500,000 NOK award (roughly $58,000) is given to “an emerging visual artist, no older than 40 years of age, who has demonstrated exceptional talent within the last five years.” The award also includes a solo exhibition at the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. Not a bad haul. That, plus the fact that the reception should be filthy with good-looking Scandinavian models, has us considering this party a rather hot ticket.

The Fabulous 5.5: Art Basel Planning Guide #2

November 17, 2015

Top Art Basel Bar Escapes 2015

Walking around during Art Basel exhausts everyone. Feet hurtin’, eyes burnin’, throat in need. Like a European museum tour, it doesn’t take long for one to burn out. If you are of age, liquid respite beckons.

Who has what it takes near the venues?

Consider these 5 places to escape, and a few semi-non-suggestions.

5. Do Not Sit On the Furniture is not a command, but a location at 423 16th Street and the premier beach club for the subterranean set. It’s dark, tight, and a global DJ hideout/paradise. It’s designed like Europe — unpretentious and built for dance.

4. The Regent Cocktail Club: On the corner of 17th and James right in the thick of all things on the Beach rests the regent in the rear of the Gale. No place on the Beach feels this much like the famous old-time, pricey, classy New York City barrooms like the King Cole in the St. Regis or Bemelman’s at the Carlyle. If Cleaveland Jones and his Trio are playing like they often do on Thursday nights, settle in for a few delightful, stirring Brazilian-tinged sets. They got skills.

3. Radio Bar South Beach: All those burnt sienna, earthy tones minus any vestiges of natural light make for a good post-modern, post-apocalyptic vibe. It’s both contemporary and sci-fi Twilight Zone – if something happens outside, you might drink your way through it. Easter Island mugs, a pool table, and stylish cocktails contribute. 814 1st Street and looking very different outside from inside.

2. Broken Shaker: The old Indian Creek Hotel became the Freehand Hostel and these Bar Lab dudes, Gabriel Orta and Elad Zvi got semi-famous and started making freaky cocktails and suddenly, yeah like, you know, the place got very hip. Amid the gorgeous patio garden are serious cocktails making waves like this one a while back: Kale and Pineapple Caipirinha. 2727 Indian Creek Drive. You can also chill upstairs at 27.

1. Repour: Established in 2015, Repour has developed serious rapport going as far as the bar in Miami Beach least likely to reveal photos showcasing it. Laid back on the beach, lots of handwritten stuff, rarely overcrowded, and beautiful drinks make this locally popular spot in the lobby of the Albion a champion.

.5 Less than worthy: Take your pick. Cool bad-secret is out backroom Bodega, gorgeous view/too tight dresses at Juvia, UFC/NRA/armed to the teeth/hidden entrance Foxhole, no one can stand it but Anthony Boudain Club Deuce, but none of which could ever be worse than rock-bottom Clevelander (except maybe Mangos).

MIAMI NEW TIMES

Art Basel Miami Beach 2015 Party Guide

Yes, art world, Art Basel in Miami Beach is almost here. And you can pretend all you want that you’re coming to Miami exclusively for the high-brow art and lectures, but nobody’s going to judge you if you manage to get some serious partying done while you’re in town. This is Miami, and if there’s one thing we’re really good at, it’s partying.

And rest assured, there will be tons of parties during Miami Art Week. From the completely free to invite-only, here is the most complete collection of musically driven, nightlife events — with a dash of art thrown in, because, you know, we aren’t savages. And thanks to a generous 5 a.m. closing time — 24 hours in Miami’s Park West district — there’s plenty of time for you to make an Art Basel mistake. (Good news is that mistake probably has a flight back to New York to catch on Sunday.)

Check back often for updates, because we will continue to update this list as more events get announced. Don’t see your event listed here? Send us an email.

A Very Superfine! Kickoff Party with Baio (of Vampire Weekend) and Lauv, presented by Superfine! House of Art and Design, the Citadel, 8300 NE Second Ave., Miami. Tickets $25 via superfine.design/tickets.

Miami Hearts Design, hosted by Karelle Levy with a KRELwear living installation, with Afrobeta and Millionyoung, presented by Superfine! House of Art and Design, the Citadel, 8300 NE Second Ave., Miami. Tickets $15 via superfine.design/tickets.

Big Times in Little Haiti with Jeffrey Paradise (of Poolside), Gilligan Moss, and Krisp, presented by Superfine! House of Art and Design, the Citadel at 8300 NE Second Ave., Miami. Tickets $25 via superfine.design/tickets.

NADA Miami Beach Will Move to the Fontainebleau Hotel

NADA Miami, the New Art Dealers Alliance’s fair during Art Basel Miami Beach in December, will be moving to the Fontainebleau Hotel on Collins Avenue for its 2015 edition. NADA opened in Miami in 2003, and in 2009 moved to the Deauville Beach Resort, in North Miami Beach, where the fair remained through last year.The de la Cruz Collection is doing a survey show loaded with art stars working in abstraction.

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The ICA Miami

ALEX BAG

On view December 1, 2015 – January 31, 2016

ICA Miami will present a solo exhibition dedicated to video and performance artist Alex Bag during Art Basel Miami Beach in 2015. On view in ICA Miami’s Atrium Gallery, The Van (Redux)* centers around one of Bag’s key videos, The Van, 2001, and features a dramatic new site-specific installation. This exhibition marks the first major U.S. presentation of the artist’s work since 2009.

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The Rubell Family Collection

Isa Genzken, Schauspieler, 2013

NO MAN’S LAND

Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection

December 2, 2015, through May 28, 2016

The Rubell Family Collection/Contemporary Arts Foundation is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, on view in Miami from December 2nd, 2015 through May 28th, 2016. This exhibition will focus on and celebrate work made by more than a hundred female artists of different generations, cultures and disciplines. These artists will be represented by paintings, photographs, sculptures and video installations that will entirely occupy the Foundation’s 28-gallery, 45,000-square-foot museum. Some galleries will contain individual presentations while others will present thematic groupings of artists. Several installations have been commissioned specifically for this exhibition.

In order to present the exhibition’s scope and diversity the Foundation will rotate artworks on view throughout the course of the exhibition, presenting different artists at different times. All of the artworks in the exhibition are from the Rubells’ permanent collection.

Other exhibitions organized by the Foundation include 30 Americans, which is currently on view at the Detroit Institute of Art through January 18, 2016 and 28 Chinese which is currently on view at the San Antonio Museum of Art through January 3, 2016. 30 Americans has now been presented at 9 institutions and seen by over one million people.

A fully illustrated catalog with essays will accompany the exhibition. A complimentary audio tour will also be available.

To celebrate the opening of NO MAN’S LAND, Jennifer Rubell will be presenting Devotion, her 12th annual large-scale, food-based installation on December 3, 2015 from 9 to 11 a.m. Devotion will explore the everyday gesture as a medium for the expression of love. Using bread, butter, and a couple engaged to be married as her media, Rubell will transform the simple act of cutting and buttering bread into a poetic exploration of repetition as devotion

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NYTimes
Miami’s art museums are grabbing headlines with splashy staff hires and well-heeled additions to their boards. Yet when it comes to actual artwork, the city’s marquee collectors — and their personally run exhibition spaces — continue to steal the show. The latest example of “The Miami Model”? A sprawling retrospective from the German blue-chip artist Anselm Kiefer that fills nearly a quarter of the 45,000-square-foot Margulies Collection at the Warehouse — a garment factory transformed into a showcase for art holdings of the real estate developer Martin Margulies.The exhibit opens Wednesday, but “it will be up forever,” Mr. Margulies said. “If you think I ever want to go through this again … .” he trailed off, motioning to the flurry of activity throughout the Warehouse this week. Mr. Kiefer directed a small army of art handlers whirring about on hydraulic lifts, racing to install an array of 25,000-pound detritus-filled sculptures, 10-feet-high neo-runic paintings, and charcoal wall inscriptions, just hours before a dinner benefiting the Lotus House homeless shelter. The works include the new sculpture, “Ages of the World,” a 17-foot stack of 400 unfinished canvases, lead books, rubble and dried sunflowers.Mr. Margulies played down the show being any kind of aesthetic shot across the bow of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, despite his public feud with that institution over its continuing to receive millions in tax dollars from a struggling community rather than relying solely on private contributors. Instead, Mr. Margulies hoped visiting schoolchildren would learn from Mr. Kiefer’s handiwork: Don’t let meager materials limit your vision. “They should realize this is the creative process of an artist.”Mr. Kiefer, 70, remains a controversial figure within the art world, alternately lionized and denounced for artwork invoking both World War II Germany and the kabbalah. Some see transcendent statements, others a reduction of the Jewish experience to kitsch. Both factions will find plenty of grist at the Warehouse, where Mr. Kiefer’s works refer to everything from the poet and Nazi labor camp survivor Paul Celan to the Old Testament’s Lilith.“Important work always creates polarization,” Mr. Kiefer explained. “The victims understand. Those people who see in me a glorifier of fascism — when you look into them, you find they have something to hide themselves.” As for the distinction between having his work shown in a “private” versus public museum, Mr. Kiefer hoped the former would proliferate. Collectors should be free to bypass museum curators, he said, and lavishly pursue their own tastes. He compared the phenomenon with the early 20th-century construction of public libraries by moguls like Andrew Carnegie: “I think it was J. P. Morgan who said, ‘If you die rich, it’s a mistake.’ ” BRETT SOKOL

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The de la Cruz Collection

The de la Cruz Collection presents their 2016 exhibition “You’ve Got to Know the Rules…to Break Them.” Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz have selected a group of artists from their personal collection who have been associated with defining 21st century practice. Self-aware of the influence that technology and the rise of consumerism has had on their work, artists exhibited follow the cool forms of Minimalism, Conceptualism and Abstract Expressionism, while injecting their works with subtle negations of their own process. Looking at traditional techniques behind painting and sculpture, these works co-exist timelessly as strategies of stylistic appropriation raise questions of subjectivity and originality.

“You’ve Got to Know the Rules…to Break Them” contextualizes New American Abstraction with German Neo-Expressionism, revealing earnest explorations of the artists technical acumen.Through experimentation, they antagonize accepted practices by drawing upon a variety of themes including cultural, historical and sociopolitical modes.

Per contra, the third floor contains a study in portraiture and memory with the works of Félix González-Torres, Ana Mendieta and Rob Pruitt. By transforming everyday objects and using energetic gestures and repetition, González-Torres, Mendieta and Pruitt accept diverse ideologies and reject the notion that art has a single vantage point.

Mana Contemporary Announces Its 2015 Miami Art Week Program

MIAMI, Nov. 3, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Mana Contemporary is pleased to announce its second edition of programming during Miami Art Week, taking place from December 3 to 6, 2015. Held at Mana’s 30-acre campus in the Wynwood arts district, this event will inaugurate the central 140,000-square-foot building’s new role as the Mana Wynwood Convention Center.

Mana Contemporary will present a diverse roster of exhibitions and programs, including:

Made in California: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art FoundationMade in California—a phrase popularized in Ed Ruscha’s groundbreaking text/image works—will be a must-see exhibition during Miami Art Week. Frederick R. Weisman was a pioneering Los Angeles collector of California art as it emerged as a center for contemporary art in the 1960s. He built a collection that includes many of the artists that rose to prominence under the legendary Ferus Gallery, and who went on to define art movements such as Light and Space, Finish Fetish, Postmodernism, and beyond. Under the direction of Mrs. Billie Milam Weisman, the foundation continues to amass a substantial collection of Los Angeles and California art. On view will be works by John Baldessari, Mary Corse, Ron Davis, Sam Francis, Joe Goode, Tim Hawkinson, Robert Irwin, and Ed Ruscha, among many others.

A Sense of Place: Selections from the Jorge M. Pérez CollectionCo-curated by Patricia Hanna and Anelys Alvarez
Including a selection of over 60 works from the collection of Jorge M. Pérez, A Sense of Place is an exhibition that explores cultural identity by way of the collection’s recent acquisitions of works by artists from Latin America. Despite the fact that these artists are working in a globalized world, where technology and communication transcend physical boundaries, many of these artists continue to construct personal and cultural identities by exploring ideas that are specific to their contexts of origin. The show will examine the idea of building cultural identity, and how artists use abstraction, architecture, politics, and memory to carve out a sense of place, and how those concerns are reflected in Pérez as a collector and Miami as a developing city. Pérez, named one of the most influential Hispanics in the U.S. by TIME magazine, is considered a visionary for incorporating the arts into his South Florida real estate developments.

Everything you are I am not: Latin American Art from the Tiroche DeLeon CollectionCurated by Catherine PetitgasEverything you are I am not presents a selection of key works of Latin American contemporary art from the Tiroche DeLeon Collection. Borrowed from a piece in the collection by Argentine artist Adrian Villar Rojas, the title of the exhibition alludes to the common practice among contemporary artists from the region to subvert the canons of mainstream art to produce thought-provoking, often humorous works. With 55 pieces by 30 artists, the exhibition will explore several different facets of this approach. The Tiroche DeLeon Collection was established in January 2011 by Serge Tiroche and Russ DeLeon with a focus on the up and coming art scenes of Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. London-based Petitgas is one of the world’s most respected collectors of Latin American art, as well as a writer, lecturer, and art historian.

PINTA MiamiPINTA Miami is the only curated boutique art fair with a specific geographic focus that looks to be an international platform for Ibero-American art identities and issues. The fair will showcase the best of abstract, concrete, neo-concrete, kinetic, and conceptual art movements. PINTA has updated its format to present a fully curated fair, featuring an international team of recognized curators chosen to direct each of the five newly designated sections of the fair.

Art Basel is just a month away. Last year the fair attracted 73,000 visitors to the Miami Beach Convention Center and this year’s 14th edition looks to be even bigger and better, with 267 galleries from 32 countries exhibiting from December 3rd to the 6th — plus the former head of NYC’s Armory Show, Noah Horowitz, is now running the fair.

Rendering of the new Miami Beach Convention Center
Work on the $615 million renovation of the convention center is scheduled to begin as soon as AB/MB ends, so look for big changes next year. The $20 million re-do of Lincoln Road is also moving along with NYC’s James Corner Field Operations, the firm that did The High Line, winning the contract to update the original Morris Lapidus design from the 1950s.

UNBUILTYves Behar is the recipient of the 2015 Design Miami “Design Visionary Award” and he’ll be honored with a special exhibit in the D/M venue behind the convention center from December 2 through 6. A student team from Harvard was chosen to design the fair’s entrance pavilion for their submission, “UNBUILT,” a collection of foam models of unrealized design projects. Expect thirty five exhibitors including Firma Casa from Brazil, showing new works by the Campana Brothers, and Italian gallery Secondome,with hand-crafted limited editions.

Several changes and new editions are coming to the numerous — 18 and counting — satellite fairs: Miami Project and Art on Paper move into the Deauville Beach Resort (6701 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach), the former site of the NADA fair; while the 13th edition of NADA heads down the street to the Fontainebleau (4441 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach).

The Miami Project is also launching a new spin-off this year called SATELLITE that will show various “experimental” projects in unoccupied properties up near their 73rd Street base. One of those, “Artist-Run,” will fill the rooms in the Ocean Terrace Hotel (7410 Ocean Terrace, Miami Beach) with different installations from 40 artist-run spaces, curated by Tiger Strikes Asteroid. It’s open from December 2nd to 6th, with a VIP/media event on December 1st from noon to 10 p.m. ALSO: Trans-Pecos, the music venue out in Queens, New York, and Sam Hillmer from the band Zs, are putting together a 5-day music program in the North Beach Amphitheater, emphasizing “musical practitioners with some form of art practice.”

Grace HartiganX Contemporary also joins the crowd with their inaugural edition in Wynwood running from December 2nd through Sunday, and a VIP opening on December 1st from 5 to 10 p.m. Twenty eight exhibitiors will be on hand, plus special projects including “Grace Hartigan: 1960 – 1965” presented by Michael Klein Arts; a look at the “genesis of street art” curated by Pamela Willoughby; and “Colombia N.O.W.” presented by TIMEBAG.

Kate Durbin’s “Hello Selfie” / Courtesy of the Artist/Photographer Jessie AskinazPULSE Miami Beach returns to Indian Beach Park (4601 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach) starting with a big “Opening Celebration” at 4 p.m. on December 1st featuring a panel discussion put together by Hyperallergic, an interactive piece by Kate Durbin called “Hello, Selfie!” and a live performance by Kalup Linzy. On December 5th, PULSE celebrates the City of Miami via a talk at 5 p.m. on “Future Visions of Miami” and a “Sunset Celebration” from 5 to 7 p.m. Fair visitors can check out “TARGET TOO,” an installation referencing items sold at the stores, originally on view in NYC last March. There’s a complimentary shuttle from the convention center, and the fair is open daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Saturday.

Wynwood WallsWynwood Walls (2520 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami) has a lot planned this year including “Walls of Change” with 14 new murals and installations and the debut of a new adjacent space called “The Wynwood Walls Garden.” The walls are by Case, Crash, Cryptik, el Seed, Erenest Zacharevic, Fafi, Hueman, INTI, The London Police, Logan Hicks and Ryan McGinness. Over in the “garden,” the Spanish art duo Pichi & Avo are doing a mural on stacked shipping containers and in the events space, Magnus Sodamin will be painting the floors and walls. The VIP opening is on December 1st in the early evening, but then it’s open to the public from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. Goldman Properties’ CEO Jessica Goldman Srebnick talks about how art transformed the Wynwood neighborhood in THIS Miami New Times piece. We also hear that New York developer (and owner of Moishe’s Moving, Mana Contemporary etc.) Moishe Mana is planning a new mixed-use development on his 30 acres of land in the middle of Wynwood.

The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at FIU (10975 SW 17th Street. Miami) will have 5 exhibitions featuring 4 Miami-based artists: Carola Braco, Rufina Santana, Carlos Estevez and Ramon Espantaleon. Plus there will be a show called “Walls of Color” with murals by the post-war NY artist Hans Hofmam and, this year, the annual “Breakfast in the Park” on Sunday, December 6th, 9:30 a.m. to noon, honors American sculptor Alice Aycock.

A previous food installation by Jennifer RubellThe Rubell Family Collection (95 NW 29th Street, Miami) will present a big exhibition called “No Man’s Land” featuring women artists from their extensive collection. It’s up from December 2nd until the end of May and will include paintings, sculptures, photos and videos by over 100 female artists. Because of the large number of works, artworks will be rotated throughout the course of the show. Jennifer Rubell will present her twelfth large-scale, food-based installation,”Devotion,” on December 3rd, 9 to 11 a.m. She’ll be using “bread, butter, and a couple engaged to be married” as her media.

Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” from the air.

“Our Hidden Futures” is the overall theme for this year’s AB/MB film program. Over 50 films and videos will be screened on the giant projection wall outside of the New World Center (500 17th Street, South Beach), plus over 80 more can be accessed in the convention center film library. The Colony Theater (1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach) will be showing director James Crump’s Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art on Friday, December 4, 8:30 p.m., followed by a panel discussion with Crump and Basel film curator Marian Masone. The evening screenings in SoundScape Park include short films with program themes ranging from “Speak Easy” to “Vanishing Point.”

Jeffrey Deitch and Larry Gagosian are co-presenting an exhibition of figurative painting and sculpture in the Moore Building (3841 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami). The opening is on Tuesday, December 1st, but it will be on view all week. According to the NYT, artists featured in the group show will include Urs Fischer, Elizabeth Peyton, John Currin and David Salle.

Since 2005, the KABINETT sector of AB/MB has invited galleries to display curated installations. This year, there are 27 exhibitions including a new work by L.A. artist Glenn Kaino called “The Internationale” that re-interprets the iconic Pierrot character — and his “only friend,” the moon — interacting with visitors via “seminal texts on post-colonial theory.” Galerie Krinzinger will be showing Chris Burden’s “Deluxe Photo Book 1971 -1973,” documenting the first three years of his performances. And Galerie Lelong will present a selection of shaped, “erotic” canvases by the Puerto Rico-based artist Zilia Sanchez.

CONTEXT Art Miami, the sister fair to Art Miami, will feature 95 international galleries this year, along with several artist projects and installations including 12 listening stations dedicated to sound art; areas dedicated to art from Berlin and Korea; solo exhibitions by Jung San, Satoru Tamura, Mr. Herget and four others; and a “fast-track” portrait project of workers at Miami International Airport. Context and Art Miami — which is celebrating its 26th year — open with a VIP preview benefiting the Perez Art Museum Miami on Tuesday, December 1, 5:30 to 10 p.m., at 2901 NE 1st Avenue in Midtown, Miami. The fair is open to the public from December 2nd through the 6th.

“Coven Services” (2004) by Alex Bag

ICA Miami (4040 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami) presents a new theatrical performance called “Artist Theater Program” by Erika Vogt, Shannon Ebner and Dylan Mira on Thursday, December 3rd at 4 p.m. Ebner also has a concurrent show, “A Public Character,” on view in the museum during AB/MB and up until January 16, 2016. This is the inaugural program in the museum’s new performance series. Also opening on December 1st is a major survey of works by the video and performance artist Alex Bag, including her interactive installation “The Van.” The museum recently announced the appointment of Ellen Salpeter, Deputy Director of NYC’s Jewish Museum, as its new director and they’ve just broken ground on a new, permanent home in the Design District. The 37,500 -square-foot building was designed by the Spanish firm Aranguren & Gallegos Arquitectos and is scheduled to open in 2017.

Installation by Alan SonfistMiami’s “art hotel” The Sagamore (1671 Collins Avenue, South Beach) has a new installation by environmental/landscape sculptor Alan Sonfist on view all week, along with their incredible Cricket Taplin Collection of contemporary art. The hotel’s annual VIP brunch — featuring a new Electronic Arts Intermix installation — is on Saturday, December 5th, 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

“Subway Station” by Louis Lozowick

The INK Miami Art Fair celebrates their 10th anniversary and maintains their exclusive focus on printmaking and works on paper. They’re back in the Suites of Dorchester (1850 Collins Avenue, South Beach) from Wednesday, December 2nd, through Sunday. Highlights include a lithograph by Louis Lozowick called Subway Station, NYC (1936) at Susan Teller Gallery’s booth and A World in a Box (2015) by Mark Dion published by Graphicstudio/U.S.F.

New York-based branding and event collective FAME is popping-up in Miami from December 2 to 6 with their ” Superfine! House of Art & Design” (8300 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami) in Little Haiti. They’re promising “the arty party of the year” with a big opening night December 2nd, 6 to 10 p.m, featuring a gigantic chandelier installation by Diego Montoya and music all week from Gilligan Moss, Lauv and more TBA. Plus, Afrobeta plays on Friday at a party hosted by PAPER fave, textile artist Karelle Levy.

The fourth edition of UNTITLED Miami is on the beach at Ocean Drive and 12th Street from December 2 to 6, with a big VIP preview on December 1st from 4 to 8 p.m. They’ve got 119 international galleries along with non-profit orgs from 20 countries. New this year will be an UNTITLED radio station broadcasting via local Wynwood Radio with interviews, performances and playlists by artists, curators etc.

Mega Guide to Art Basel Miami Beach 2015: Part 3

Things are really starting to come together at Argentine developer Alan Faena’s new residential and arts district between 32nd and 36th Streets on Collins Avenue. By the time AB/MB rolls around, the Faena Hotel Miami Beach should be up and running, and construction is now complete on the Foster + Partners residential tower. The Faena Forum (above), designed by OMA Rem Koolhaas, should be open in April 2016. For Basel Miami 2015, they’ve planned a series of cool events including: A roller-disco installation by assume vivid astro focus that will be open to the public daily on the beach and feature local and international DJs; a “theater curtain” installation called “A Site To Behold” by Spanish artist Almudena Lober that lets visitors play alternate roles of “actor” and “performer”; and a site-specific “sand and light” installation by Jim Denevan.

The Perez Art Museum Miami (aka PAMM) — designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron — had it’s big debut in 2013 in downtown Miami’s Museum Park. On December 3rd, 2015, 9 p.m. to midnight, they’ll be premiering a collab performance by Devonte Hynes of Blood Orange and Ryan McNamara called “Dimensions” that includes elements of dance, music and sculpture. Also, during this open house for members and VIPs, you can check out their current exhibitions including Nari Ward’s “Sun Splashed,” Firelei Baez’ “Bloodlines,” and a show of Aboriginal Australian abstract painting.

Moishe Mana’s Mana Contemporary (318 NW 23rd Street, Miami) in Wynwood plans several exhibitions during AB/MB including “Made in California,” featuring selections from L.A. collector Frederick R. Weisman’s Art Foundation; “A Sense of Place,” with over 60 works from the collection of Jorge M. Perez; and “Everything You Are Not,” key works of Latin American art from the Tiroche DeLeon collection. All are up from December 3rd thru the 6th, with a VIP preview on December 1st. Mana Urban Arts is also doing a collab with The Bushwick Collective at the former RC Cola Plant (550 NW 24th Street, Miami) that includes over 50 artists — so far the list includes Ghost, GIZ, Pixel Pancho, Case Maclaim and Shok-1 — plus skateboarding, DJs, live music etc.

Lots of music events and parties are starting to come in, including a show with Jamie xx and Four Tet on Friday, December 4th, in the Black Room at Mana Wynwood (318 NW 23rd Street, Miami), presented by III Points and Young Turks. Tickets are available HERE. At the same venue, Life & Death records presents Tale of Us, Mind Against, Thugfucker and “special guest” Richie Hawtin on December 3rd. Tickets are HERE. We also hear that Danny Howells will be spinning at Do Not Sit On The Furniture (423 16th Street, Miami Beach) on Saturday, December 5th; and Marco Carola and Stacey Pullen are at Story (136 Collins Avenue, South Beach) on Saturday, December 5th.

Two young London-based artists, Walter & Zoniel, will set up a large, hand-built camera in the Delano Hotel (1685 Collins Avenue, South Beach) from December 2nd to the 5th for a performance piece called “Alpha-Ation.” They’ll be creating exclusive, hand-colored portraits of “high-profile” figures all week and have already shot Lindsay Lohan and Tinie Tempah. The work is presented by the UK gallery Gazelli Art House. There’s also an invite-only reception with the artists at the Delano on Saturday night.

Hans Ulrich Obrist

AB/MB’s Conversations and Salon series brings together artists, curators, gallerists, historians, critics and collectors for 23 talks and panels all week. Jenny Holzer and Trevor Paglen kick things off on December 3rd, 10 to 11 a.m., in the Hall C auditorium. Other “conversations” include London’s Serpentine co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist on Friday morning and Genius Grant winner Nicole Eisenman on Sunday. In the Salon series, Obrist will also moderate a conversation between artist Alex Israel and author Bret Easton Ellis on “the evolution of the L.A. art scene.”

L.A. painter and installation artist Lisa Solberg will preview her latest project, “Mister Lee’s Shangri-La,” at Soho Beach House (4385 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach) on Saturday, December 5th. The work — “an immersive exotic dance club sheltered inside a greenhouse” — will then be on view at MAMA Gallery (1242 Palmetto Street, Los Angeles) in L.A. as of December 19th.

Adrien Brody isn’t just a great actor. He’ll be showing several of his paintings during AB/MB in a show called “Hot Dogs, Hamburgers and Handguns” at Lulu Laboratorium (173 NW 23rd Street, Miami) in Wynwood. The show was curated by Spanish-American artist Domingo Zapata and the big opening party starts at 10p.m. on December 2nd.

The National YoungArts Foundation‘s (2100 Biscayne Blvd., Miami) current show, “The Future Was Written,” features an interactive work by Daniel Arsham that asks visitors to use any of 2,000 chalk objects to draw on the gallery walls. On view until December 11th.

Chrome Hearts celebrates their new collaborators, Laduree and Sean Kelly Gallery, on December 2nd, 8 to 11 p.m., in the Chrome Hearts (4025 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami) shop in the Design District with a private, VIP party featuring works by Sean Kelly artists including Marina Abramovic, Los Carpinteros, Jose Davila, Robert Mapplethorpe and many more. Also there’s a special performance by Abstrakto and DJ set from Atlanta de Cadenet Taylor.

The MoMA Design Store and online skate deck site, The Skateroom, will open a pop-up in the Delano Hotel (1685 Collins Avenue, South Beach) from November 30th to December 6th. The “immersive installation” will sell limited-edition skateboard decks featuring Andy Warhol artworks including his Campbell’s Soup cans, Guns, Car Crash etc. A portion of the proceeds will go to Skateistan, a non-profit org that uses skateboarding to empower youth. The private VIP opening is December 2, 8 to 11 p.m.

Louis Vuitton (140 NE 39th Street, Miami) will be presenting “Objets Nomandes” — a new collection of foldable furniture and travel accessories — in their new store in the Design District during AB/MB, as of December 3rd. The pieces are collabs with international designers including the Campana Brothers, Maarten Baas and Nendo. You can also check out the world-exclusive unveiling of a lounge chair designed by Marcel Wanders.

ArtCenter/South Florida has an “off-site” installation called “D.O.A.” by the Israel-based artist Dina Shenhav over in Miami’s Little River District at 7252 NW Miami Court. Shenav will create a hunter’s cabin filled with “hunter” paraphernalia sculpted from yellow foam. Up from November 29th until the end of January.

One of our fave AB/MB sectors, PUBLIC, just announced this year’s list of 26 artists who’ll be doing site-specific installations and performances all week in Collins Park. Several caught our eye: a jemstone-encrusted “Healing Pavilion” enhanced with “metaphysical properties” by Sam Falls; a group of tall chairs from the original production Robert Wilson’s “Einstein on the Beach;” a giant set of red lips by Sterling Ruby; and a monumental deer lawn ornament by Tony Tasset. Opening night is Wednesday, December 2nd, 7 to 9 p.m., and it features a female tai chi master, male bodybuilders, men on skateboards, a dandy hobo and an evening performance by Yan Xing.

Tony Tasset, Deer, 2015Photo cred. Kavi GuptaSCOPE returns to South Beach from December 2 to 6 (VIPs get in on the 1st) with 120 exhibitors from 22 countries, plus several special sections including Juxtapoz Presents, the Breeder Program for new galleries and FEATURE, showcasing photography. For a fourth year, the fair collabs with VH1 on a music series featuring up-and-coming artists. There’s also an invite-only party with recording artists Mack Wilds and Lil’ Dicky on Friday night at Nikki Beach, sponsored by SCOPE, VH1 and BMI.

As usual, there are lots of cool things happening at The Standard Miami (40 Island Avenue, South Beach) during the week including: The Standard X The Posters launch of their collab poster by Miami-based artist Jim Drain to celebrate the hotel’s 10th anniversary (available in the hotel’s gift shop), a VIP-only cocktail party hosted by Andre Saraiva, a book signing with Cheryl Dunn for her “Festivals Are Good,” a “chopped art” party with the Bruce High Quality Foundation and, of course, there’s the annual Lazy Sunday BBQ hosted this year by Creative Time on December 6th.

The design team of George Yabu & Glenn Pushelberg return to the BASEMENT nightclub in the Miami Beach EDITION Hotel (2901 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach) for an invite-only party with London’s Horse Meat Disco crew and special guest Giorgio Moroder on Thursday, December 3rd. They’re also hosting a private luncheon in the hotel’s Matador Room on Friday and launching a biannual “bookazine” called YP: Transformation, with the first issue available exclusively in the EDITION Hotel during AB/MB.

The EDITION also hosts pop-up exhibitions by NYC galleries in two of their fab bungalows: Half Gallery and HarperCollins Publishers will feature paintings by Daniel Heidkamp, an installation by Tom Sachs and book signings by Justin Adian, Sylvie Fleury and Sue Williamson; Salon 94 will have an installation by Jeremy Couillard.

JJeremy Couillard, Bowery Video Wall, 2014PULSE Miami Beach (4601 Collins Avenue, Indian Beach Park) just announced their 2015 series of special projects including: a neon installation by Texas artists Alicia Eggert and Mike Fleming, a sculpture called “Trees” by Gordon Holden, a faux apartment building by Chris Jones, “Over and Under” by Francis Trombly and a small architectural piece inspired by Corbusier by New York artist Jim Osman. The fair’s PLAY section for video and new media will be curated by Stacy Engman.

Francis Trombly, Over and Under, 2015Bortolami Gallery is opening a year-long exhibition called “Miami” by the French conceptual artist Daniel Buren on December 1st in the M Building (194 NW 30th Street, Miami). The show marks the 50th anniversary of his works with fabric and the 8.7 cm stripe. By periodically installing new works, Buren will also alter the exhibition during the year.

Daniel BurenSpanish luxury fashion house LOEWE (110 NE 39th Street, Miami) opens a group show called “Close Encounters” on Wednesday, December 2nd, 6:30 to 9 p.m. The artists are Anthea Hamilton, Paul Nash, Lucie Rie and Rose Wylie; and the hosts for the evening are Jonathan Anderson, creative director of Loewe, with Don and Mira Rubell. Invite only.

Anthea Hamilton, Dance, 2012

Previewing their upcoming South Beach studio, SoulCycle will pop-up poolside at the 1 Hotel (2341 Collins Avenue, South Beach) starting on Tuesday, December 1st. They plan to open permanently in the hotel in January 2016.

Absolut Elyx, Sean Kelly Gallery, Paddle8 and Water For People celebrate WATER, “the most important drink in the world,” with a private charity auction and party at the Delano Hotel (1685 Collins Avenue, South Beach) on Thursday, December 3rd, 7 to 10 p.m. Look for a live performance by the Swedish singer Elliphant and a DJ set by Jasmine Solano.

ElliphantPhoto Cred. Corey OlsenRicardo Barroso and Eva Longoria celebrate the launch of “Ricardo Barroso Interiors” at Casa Tua (1700 James Avenue, South Beach) on December 3rd. The book includes 240 color photographs of his past and present work, with an accompanying text by Barroso and Fionn Petch and a foreword by Longoria. Invite only.

Ricardo BarrosoMolteni (4100 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami) celebrates their 80th anniversary on December 3rd, 7 to 10 p.m., with a VIP soiree featuring “Amare Gio Ponti,” the first film about the legendary Italian architect and designer.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/142146817Libertine, one of the new clubs in downtown Miami’s 24-hour party district, hosts a release party for Nakid Magazine‘s latest issue and their cover artist Jen Stark on Friday night, December 4th. Stark recently collab’ed with Miley Cyrus on MTV’s VMA Awards and has a new installation at Miami International Airport.

Jen StarkCorona brings their “Electric Beach” to the Clevelander Hotel (1020 Ocean Drive, South Beach) on December 5th, 3 to 8 p.m., with a live performance by Chilean artist DASIC, and tons of music from Craze, Astronomar, Ape Drums and TJ Mizell.

DasicBrown Jordan and Sunbrella are getting together to showcase photographs by Gray Malin at a sneak-peek preview of Brown Jordan’s new store in the Design District. The invite-only opening is on Thursday, and the store should be open at the beginning of the new year. Some of the photos from the show will be on view there permanently and others are from Malin’s personal collection.

Vincent Johnson<vincentjohnsonart@gmail.com>

At the Hammer museum I saw something most interesting: In the traveling retrospective of a female Art Center MFA alum, I noticed that MoMA had acquired a six-part handwriting-as-drawing that is a work of Text-based art, culled from literature. The work had been in the artist’s graduate thesis show. I’m aware of museums seeking out the earliest examples of an artist’s work, and note that most of the work in the exhibition was not in major collections, public or private, but from the artist’s four powerhouse galleries, including Buchholtz, which means she passed the test of one of the supreme German cultural monocle examinations.

Many years ago, in reverie of the Buchholtz gallery’s presence, an artistic intervention by HAHA, made his apartment the site and space of exhibition, but through a glass window. You can read about this online.

The current Hammer retrospective artist’s career seems to have surged mostly recently, mostly upon her video works and digital media works, some of which prominently feature black characters.

Next month, another female Art Center MFA alum will have a video art retrospective, this will be at LACMA. The museum reports that the exhibition will occupy 20,000 sq. ft., the largest amount of floor space ever dedicated to a female artist exhibition there. I’m looking forward to this artist’s exhibition, and seeing what I had not seen in the past. I recall artists saying that her work made them get a headache, yet even then her career was one of the most ascendant in LA, based largely in Western Europe, specifically in Cologne and Dusseldorf, where the Ludwig Forum and K21 are among the 30 modern and contemporary art museums in the Nordheim-Westfalia region, which has the largest collection of these types of museums in the world.

As I have said many times before, it is also where over 100,000 art collectors reside; it is where Text Zur Kunzt is published and numerous art magazines are published – that is – except for those that have decamped for Berlin. It is a complete artistic universe, from bookstores to massive artist studios.

The Ludwigs both held full German doctor’s degrees in art history, and opened 13 different modern and contemporary museums in Western Europe. Although Cologne looks like an Ugly American city, it is not; it was the intellectual and artistic center of Western Europe. It is where the early 1980’s wave of German painters held sway – Immendorf, Kiefer, Richter, Baselitz, all who showed immense canvases on West Broadway in Soho. When one attends an art opening in Cologne, it is to attend the height of German fashion exhibition too.

Now Kiefer and Richter are riding most high, with Kiefer just having had a stunning retrospective at the Royal Academy in London, and will follow-up with one from his personal collection this December in Miami in the private collection space owned by the Margulies. My partner and I saw the absolute blowout Kiefer show at the R.A., which is modeled after the French Academy. Inside on the walls of the R.A. London – up high, are representational sculptures of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and so on – you get the picture. What is transmitted as well is the former relationship between state power and culture production.

As for Richter, whose stellar retrospective I also saw in London, but at the Tate Modern, just a few years ago, his market has reached over $1.2 billion in the past five years alone. As I’ve pointed out before, Richter invented a style he called Capitalist Realism while he was a student at the Dusseldorf Academy. He worked as a photorealist painter, and sold his works for not much. At one point he said he felt that he had painted himself into a corner by working against the International Style – Abstraction. He was at one point challenged to produce major abstract works, and did just that. It is this work that is his most luxurious, most commanding, rewarding, visceral, powerful.

Last, Anselm Kiefer lives in a castle. He has a driver; he dresses in 19th century landed gentry garb. The Dusseldorf Art Academy is the school which we used to look upon and dream – where artists were made to make their own paint, paint box, brushes, and every tool of the artist, taught by the giants of the German art scene. That historic and rigorous skill set training has not entered the LA art academy program, but its power to produce artists has indeed.

By the way, the New Objectivity exhibition of German art has come to LACMA, enjoy. Across the street from the Met is a similar exhibition at the Neu gallery. It’s my understanding that the son of one of German’s most prominent collectors is building a loan collection to be lent long term to LACMA; it will be composed of about a dozen artists – all men of European blood, all towering figures LA and German contemporary art.

There are recently created documentary films of both Kiefer and Richter working in their studios. Kiefer works in France, in an abandoned 300,000 sq. ft. department store that is his studio. His paint materials are mined from the French soil by a team of professionals, who then turn this into materials for making paintings.

In this context, is most rewarding to see the paintings by African Diaspora artist rise into the major gallery spaces and sell for immodest pricing, from MacArthur Binion, Jack Whitten, Ed Clark, and many more.

What is still not happening (and believe me I am looking) is the recuperation of Black Women Artists of the same generation as Barkley Hendricks, or Sam Gilliam, or whomever is in this class of black artists who experienced 40-50 year career delays.

9:56AM 11.2015 UPDATE

I’ve said this before – that LA, et al is part of the re-formation of the 20th century Paris/German art world and its economic and cultural benefactors Picasso & Matisse et. al. v . Duchamp et al. in legal terms, this re-emergent artworld decimated by WWII has been re-calibrated and reborn, by an unknown multiplier that dwarfs all past histories. No more selling a painting for a dozen eggs or a flash of the Parisian skirt now naked – who is also an artist that pays a male artist’s benefactors bill for an extravaganza of drinking and meals with all your male artistic world friends. Today, as in centuries past, many artists and other creatives and collectors, whose family became rich from slavery also take part now in this artistic paradise game, pay attention especially European collectors whose nation was major in the slave trade. Did I forget to mention the artworld universe that is enabled ana re0-enabled and thrives by and is paid for in advance by the rewards of 400 years of American slavery? This is what is called a “Trust Fund”.

“Keep a watchful eye” on the collectors in Brussels, the city that stripped the Congo of its material resources for the West to build its spectacular core buildings and its Royal Congo Museum. Brussels is the home of Magritte and more importantly, the creator of institutional critique at the genius level, not the ignorant peasant complainer level, Marcel Broodthaers, whose 2016 MoMA retrospective is being worshiped even before it is here. Brussels created Art Deco from raping the Congo. The wood in living Brussels buildings is from the Congo. Note that Broodthaers is my hero as he destroyed the equivalent of ARTFORUM through his arguments with them. That’s all I will say for now.

Colored/Negro/Black/Africa-American Artists – please read how Thomas McEvilley crushed MoMA’s utopia argument re how Modernism was created, in his several texts, the lead of which were letters and responses published in ARTFORUM. THIS LATER BECAME BOOKS. You already know how ELVIS rode the backs of Negro musical achievement to create his ART; MOMA’s 1984 PRIMITIVISM exhibition is the same ASTRONOMICAL gigantic lie.

10:27AM 11.1.2015 UPDATE

The Met acknowledges this in its current landmark “Kongo” exhibition. What it does not say but knows is that the raw materials from the Kongo were used to created Art Deco Art, based upon defamed Kongo imagery and Kongo raw materials. It also does not say that key elemental objects in the history of 20th century Modernism were created using Belgian atrocity Kongo Copal resin in its paintings; this is my research project on this material and its use that I presented in 2014 in Chicago. This Copal was thought to be the centuries sought missing element that was used by Jan Van Eyck to create paintings that looked like you were looking through water. A Polish aristocrat NY society painter named Frederick Taubes, who worked with U. Ill. chemists and Belgian National Laboratories, created the visionary version of this most sought after material in the early 1940’s. Taubes has 27 paintings in the Met. He was the most highly regarded representational painter of the European tradition of his time in NYC. Through my research, I am of the belief that not only Picasso and Pollock, and Le Corbusier, but untold numbers of other artists used Belgian Congo Copal resin in their painting materials, (from the late 19th century to at least 1970) as it was scientifically considered by paint chemists to be the super product of the age, due to its hardness and glass-like quality. Its primary use was in commercial house paint as it was a superior binder. The Getty held a symposium on its use. It was used in linoleum. It was used in mid century LP records. It was used in Konk hair cream. It was used premier art supplies in Europe and America. I have patent documentation of the major American corporations that used it. If you were an unaware Colored/Negro in say 1950/1960, your floor was covered in this linoleum; it was in your hair, and was in the paint on your walls, it ws in uyour LP’s; and it was the standard material used in the US and Britain for the first half of the 20th century. You were literally living and breathing and dancing through the biochemistry of the Kongo experience. MoMA is fully aware of this use; so is the Met and the Getty, and the Art Institute of Chicago; but there is no statement or research being done to show that Belgian Congo Copal painting resin is at the core of the creation of MODERNISM, just as the Art from the Congo is core to the Met’s collection. Picasso used this upscale house paint called Ripolin. I contacted several sources who said that Yes, it’s most likely that the premier house paint in France also used the premier resin – that from the Belgian controlled and defiled Congo. Note that over ten million Congo people were murdered by Belgium so that it could have wealth similar to the other European nations that committed similar atrocities. Congo Copal resin was most prized. In the 1940’s the NYTimes reported it selling at 60,000 bottles a year. Note that when the Congo attempted to free itself from Belgian rule, its first president was murdered by USA/British and Belgian rule.

Currently, the most historic art supply stores and Colour Men (the precursor to what we call art supply stores – which still exist in Europe) still sell Congo copal painting medium. This includes Sennilier, the most famed artist supply store in ART HISTORY – located directly across from the Louvre, which created the oil stick for Picasso, and sold to Van Gogh, et. al. A creative friend of mines in Europe made me aware of this. LeFranc & Bourgeoise in Paris (now LeFranc & Cie also see this product.) I also uncovered this use by Grumbacher – and confronted their paint chemist and publicity department. Grumbacher took over the manufacture of Congo Copal resin paint.

Pay attention: Belgian Congo Copal Painting Resin was the most opulent artist material of its time. This was 1890-1970 at a minimum. Several other major American art supply stores used this resin and knew how it was sourced, including the F.W. Weber art supply company that started in the 19th century in Philadelphia. The papers of Weber are in the Getty Research Institute’s collection. Both Taubes and his counterpart and adversary Ralph Mayers were primary in teaching artists how to use the best art materials of the period. Yale holds the papers and research materials of Ralph Mayers. Both Mayers and Taubes were well aware that the Belgian Congo – which used horrific means of 20th century slavery to extract raw the raw materials that created Belgium’s weath. If you look at photographs of the art supplies of the period you will see they are from the Belgian Congo. This is part of my research. American Artist Magazine was the primary information provider of artist materials use and research.

Pauline Karpidas, one of the twelve most powerful art collectors in the world is opening a private collection space in Dallas. Karpidas has one of the world’s leading private gallery spaces in Hydra, Greece called the Hydra Workshop.

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Pauline Karpidas

Who is she? The widow of Greek shipping tycoon Constantine Karpidas and a major patron of the arts.

What’s in her collection? British-born Karpidas owns a gallery on the Greek island of Hydra, where she has displayed works by Urs Fischer, Wilhelm Sasnal and Sergej Jensen, and more recently by American artists Frank Benson and Mark Grotjahn.

In late 17th-century Paris, almost a century before the opening of the Louvre, a determined English visitor, Dr. Lister, was amazed at how easy it was to gain entry to the private art collections of the city’s most prominent citizens. He wrote a guidebook to help others learn the ropes. Hint: You had to wear a sword, if you were a man, as it was a signifier of high social status.

Visitors to Dallas in the years before the 1908 opening of the Dallas Art Association’s permanent gallery in Fair Park would have been able to visit the private art gallery of Col. and Mrs. William L. Crawford, completed in 1900 next to their Ross Avenue “Eastlake Cottage.” The gallery was open to the public via its own door, allowing the Crawfords to go on about their lives in their vast cottage — all long gone.

Tempting as it might be to think that such galleries have gone the way of aristocrats’ noblesse oblige, private art spaces have made a comeback. In Dallas we have so many of them, the city rivals New York, Miami and Los Angeles.

Unlike museums conceived as public institutions, private art spaces are available to art lovers only in limited ways; they are not usually governed by independent boards or housed in buildings owned or managed by foundations or government bodies.

Nor are they like commercial art galleries that exist to sell artworks. In most private art spaces, there are no price lists or indications that works are for sale — usually, they aren’t. This frees viewers to respond to work as they would in a museum.

Generally, these new anti-institutions and anti-galleries adapt spaces to their purpose. Their names reflect this, including the Warehouse, the Power Station and the Reading Room.

The Goss-Michael Foundation was on the cutting edge here. Its Uptown origins and ambition to expose what’s called YBA — for young British artists — to a Dallas audience have broadened with its move to the Design District.

The foundation boasts a collection of more than 500 works, which are shown on a rotating basis. Unlike most private art spaces, the Goss-Michael Foundation has regular hours of operation, a public exhibition program and an artist residency program. It was founded in 2007 and its early openings were must-attend events, bringing the hype and glamour of the London scene to Dallas.

Adaptable venues

Two other ambitious spaces began to be considered by their owners.

The first to open formally was the Power Station, now nearly 5 years old, and operating in a former power station in Exposition Park. It’s a neighbor of 500X Gallery, one of Texas’ oldest artist cooperatives, and CentralTrak, the University of Texas at Dallas’ artist residency.

The Power Station space embodies the high-octane vision and taste of Alden and Janelle Pinnell and their foundation, which funds the programs and does so in a way that is anything but self-promotional. The Pinnell space is not for a growing private collection of more than 200 works by a mixture of A-list and experimental artists. Instead, it is a noncommercial venue in which artists conceive of projects for Dallas in a modified two-story industrial space. The third story and roof house visiting artists, foundation offices and are used to host parties and meals.

The Pinnells’ curatorial partner is New York art adviser Rob Teeters. They are committed both to highly experimental curation, much of it utterly noncommercial, and to a program of publication. The latter ensures that the Power Station has a permanent international record beyond the openings and programs organized in the space itself.

The largest and most ambitious private art space in Dallas, the Warehouse, came about more quickly. Its founders and major supporters, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky and Amy and Vernon Faulconer, realized that their respective collections were growing so rapidly, with the resulting large bills for storage and art handling, that they should combine to purchase a facility.

Contemporary art

After a search of a few months, they purchased a large warehouse near the Galleria Dallas in 2011. Its sheer scale made it possible for them to store their own collections, rent a good deal of space to a regional firm that stores and handles art, and also to create a contemporary museum-scale exhibition space. They hired a local architect, David Droese of Droese Raney Architecture, who designed a series of variously sized white, naturally lighted galleries that many visitors consider the single best space in North Texas to view contemporary art.

The gallery space itself is more than 18,000 square feet, larger by 4,000 than the largest temporary exhibition space in a Dallas museum. More than 8,000 square feet have been set aside for storage and an additional 3,500 square feet for offices, library, kitchen and meeting area. Unlike the Power Station, the Warehouse, which opened in 2012, is financed completely privately, without a foundation to act as a tax shelter for its owners.

This privacy creates the conditions for flexibility and autonomy. No one interferes. No one unwanted is admitted. No one complains about cost overruns or carps about the schedule. Like the Pinnells at the Power Station, the owners of the Warehouse consult regularly with a New York adviser, in this case, Allan Schwartzman.

The Warehouse draws the crème de la crème of the contemporary art scene. The day I spoke with Howard Rachofsky, a group of collectors from Germany had toured the space. The previous time I was there, Dallas collector Marguerite Hoffman had a London visitor in tow. More recently, the British sculptor Phyllida Barlow and her painter-writer husband, Fabian Peake, were given a private tour.

The only important private art space in Dallas that does not focus on contemporary art is the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum of Samurai Art in Uptown. It’s a dramatically installed gallery designed by the architectural team of Harwood International, the company owned by the Barbier-Muellers. It’s fully staffed and open six days a week without an appointment. With no board of trustees or permanent advisers, this Samurai collection functions as the public extension of a family. Indeed, many of the elements of armor in the display were formerly shown in their home.

Smaller spaces

Some of the most interesting private spaces are small.

At the Reading Room, the highly intellectual art space conceived and curated by founder-director Karen Weiner, word-based art is exhibited and performed. Housed in a tiny one-room building on Parry Avenue across from the main entrance to Fair Park, it opened in 2010 and has nurtured a growing text-based art scene in Dallas with more than 60 curated exhibitions, readings and performances.

Its newer neighbor, the Wilcox Space, is housed in the former home and studio of John Wilcox, one of the most distinguished abstract painters in Dallas. He died in 2012. Redesigned by Cunningham Architects, the space features regular curated exhibitions of his work and is owned and maintained by his younger brother, David. It is open by appointment only.

More to come

More private art spaces are on the way in the Dallas Design District.

One, the Karpidas Space, has recently completed renovation of a building. The London collector Pauline Karpidas and her Dallas-based son and daughter-in-law are behind it. The Karpidas Collection of Contemporary Art is so important globally that this opening is keenly anticipated.

Another, called Site131, is being built by the mother-son team of Joan and Seth Davidow in a restored warehouse on Payne Street. It’s programming will pair local contemporary artists with national and international figures.

Dallas trendsetter Capera Ryan has purchased a warehouse at 171 Oak Lawn and is exploring many options for independently curated installations of art.

Ten years ago, none of these private art spaces existed, and with their extraordinary fluorescence, Dallas will soon rival Miami, where the private art spaces movement first took off in the United States.

With shorter planning cycles, greater freedom of expression and almost libertarian license to do what their owners want, these spaces seem as freewheeling as Texas itself. They have done as much as the local art museums to create the conditions for an informed, arts-oriented public.

Let’s hope that this arena of the art world remains as vital as it has been in the last decade.

Rick Brettell is founding director of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is a former director of the Dallas Museum of Art.

About Rick Brettell

Rick Brettell, is an internationally respected art historian, curator and educator, and a former director of the Dallas Museum of Art. He also is the Margaret McDermott Distinguished Chair of Art and Aesthetics at the University of Texas at Dallas, a position he has held since 1998. Brettell, who has a doctorate in art history from Yale University, was an assistant professor of art history at UT Austin before serving eight years as Searle curator of European painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition to organizing museum exhibitions, he has authored numerous scholarly books, catalogues and articles, especially on French impressionism.

Art • May, 22 2014 • By staff
Dallas Rising: Contemporary Art in the Texan Metropolis
With the closing of the most successful iteration of the Dallas Art Fair behind us, Dallas has established itself as one of the U.S.’s most important art cities. Join us as we take a closer look at the city’s resurgence.

Dallas is currently undergoing a cultural renaissance thanks to the reemergence of a vibrant, diverse and spontaneous art scene. Traditionally, Texas has had a rich artistic history thanks in part to the city of Austin and perhaps most famously to Donald Judd and his development of a minimalistic Marfa utopia.

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The city in the high desert of West Texas became the artistic center of Texas during the mid to late 1970s following a collaboration between Judd and the Dia Foundation that saw the decommissioned Fort DA Russell transformed into art spaces designed to present individual artist’s collections permanently. Judd had become disillusioned by the short duration of museum exhibitions, seeing these restrictions as a major stumbling block to fully understanding the work of the artist on view. Thanks to the commitment of the both the Judd and Chinati foundations, the city continues to serve as a site for artistic experimentation. Current attractions include Prada Marfa, a popup art exhibit, the Lannan Foundation Writers Residency Program and a multifunctional art space dubbed, “Ballroom Marfa.”

Alongside Marfa, Austin has also functioned as an artistic beacon in Texas. The city is home to the University of Texas, Austin’s Blanton Museum of Art – one of the largest university museums in the United States – and since 1987 has hosted South by Southwest. The festival has since developed into Austin’s cultural draw through its focus on music, film and interactive media. As a result, attendance has grown significantly and it now regularly draws crowds of over 20,000 people each March.

Bearing in mind the size, location and stature of Marfa and Austin, Dallas is still the largest economic center in Texas. What remains most interesting about the situation is that despite the economic importance of Dallas, the artistic and cultural success of both Marfa and Austin has meant that Dallas has never been so remarkably spoken about when it comes to the arts.

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However, this is beginning to change. As it’s happened the world over – in New York’s Meatpacking District, Miami’s Wynwood, Cape Town’s Woodstock and London’s Hoxton – artists have become the catalyst for the revitalization of dilapidated and derelict neighborhoods that have fallen prey to recent economic and industrial failures. The nature of these forgotten industrial areas allows artists to find large spaces for greatly reduced prices and they’re ultimately able to execute projects that wouldn’t be viable in highly commercialized downtown areas, resulting in radically transformed neighborhoods which often become frequented tourist attractions.

It’s this exciting process of redevelopment that Dallas finds itself currently undergoing. With the establishment and subsequent expansion of the Dallas Art Fair, the renovation and repositioning of the Joule Hotel as Dallas’ very own art boutique hotel, the reemergence of the reputable Dallas Contemporary, and a group of passionate artists and collectors, the city now has all the makings of a major artistic city.

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Around since 1978, Dallas Contemporary is busy enjoying a reinvigoration and currently hosts a Richard Phillips retrospective alongside Julian Schnabel’s first U.S. museum presentation since the ’80s. These two high-profile exhibitions only serve to further reinforce the institution’s reestablishment as a major artistic venue for contemporary art. The Richard Phillips retrospective, which also happens to be his first U.S. solo museum survey, brings together both new and past work that highlight his career long exploration of themes of political and social identity, eroticized desire and consumerism. Meanwhile, Julian Schnabel’s presentation of 15 monumental paintings created over the last decade highlight a sense of cinematic intuition inspired by his work as a filmmaker.

Most importantly though, is that both these exhibitions indicate the ability of Dallas Contemporary to present highly reputable and respected contemporary art exhibitions. The fact that both artists were willing to participate is an important indication of their recognition of Dallas as a major art city.

Alongside Dallas Contemporary, the repositioning of Dallas as a cultural/artistic capital has been driven in part by the renovation of Joule Hotel. The $78 million dollar renovation saw the hotel completely overhauled and remodeled into a boutique art hotel, now housing the collection of hotel owner Tim Headington. The hotel has revitalized downtown Dallas and has become a must-visit for all art fair goers. WMagazine has described the hotel as “Texas charm meets artworld panache,” and the hotel’s commitment to the arts in Dallas is epitomized by their hosting of The Eyeball, an annual culminating gala celebrating Dallas Art Week.

“Dallas collectors are renowned for being especially collaborative in nature, buying a piece of art together and rotating it between collections, or pooling money to buy a work for a museum.”

As the art world continues to shift its attention from galleries and museums to the craze of the art fair calendar, every major city is now required to present their own iteration in order to stay relevant. Dallas is no different. For 6 years now, the city has presented the Dallas Art Fair for a week in April. In that short time the fair has experienced an increasing amount of growth and expansion, similar to fairs in New York and Miami, a fact highlighted by Interview Magazine. As a result of its ever-increasing popularity, the fair has grown to host over 90 national and international galleries including staples like James Fuentes, OHWOW and Jonathan Viner.

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Nowhere else is this transformation more visible than in Dallas’ Deep Ellum neighborhood. Formerly an industrial area home to one of Henry Ford’s earliest automobile plants, Deep Ellum has blossomed into a physical manifestation of the successful growth of cultural Dallas. Left abandoned and desolate for years, most of the real estate was gobbled up by developer Scott Ruhrman, who has set about transforming the area into one of the most visited artistic hubs within the city. The large amounts of space combined with his commitment and financial investment, and that of others, has allowed the neighborhood to develop into a home for some of the city’s most exciting young artists and curators.

Consequently, the area has become a source for artistic experimentation due to the willingness of people like Ruhrman to support these endeavors. The neighborhood has now become Dallas’ very own artistic tourist destination thanks to its redevelopment through various cultural programs, such as “Deep Ellum Windows,” an ephemeral pop up installation series, celebrating the temporality of the viewing experience alongside a wide array of vibrant street art murals.

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Furthermore, one cannot discount the role of collectors in helping reposition the city. Collectors, along with artists, have been at the forefront of neighborhood and institutional revitalization. Their involvement has emphasized the collaborative nature of the Dallas renaissance. This is a sentiment shared by Alden Pinell, a skincare tycoon, art collector and the artistic director of The Power Station, a conceptually explorative exhibition space in downtown Dallas. “Dallas collectors are renowned for being especially collaborative in nature, buying a piece of art together and rotating it between collections, or pooling money to buy a work for a museum,” he lets on. Such involvement in the local art scene is an indication of the shared passion necessary for progressive development of the city’s arts and culture.

Most intriguing about the emergence of Dallas as a cultural capital is how involved the people of Dallas are in the process. Whether it be local artists, collectors, real estate developers or just the general viewing audience, this is a project driven by people who love their city. It remains to be seen how long the rise lasts, but for now, with a stream of media interest and a large group of passionate supporters, Dallas truly is the toast of Texas.

Written by Houghton Kinsman for Highsnobiety.com

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Unpacking the Dallas Scene’s Disproportionate Art World Influence

The Coasts may often scoff at Dallas’s higher-the-hair attitude, labeling its tendencies as money-flashing at its most conspicuous. But, against those odds, the city has recently become an American arts destination—and one that looks fresher and more fortified than many of the culture capitals flanking Ol’ Glory’s oceans.

That’s not to say Dallas is a stranger to contemporary art. Insiders have long whispered about its red-hot market, well-funded institutions, and surreptitious yet far-reaching influence. A triumvirate of Dallas collectors were, for many years, the only names associated with the city: the Rachofskys, the Roses, and the Hoffmans. But, while Howard and Cindy, Deedie and Rusty, and Marguerite (continuing on without her late husband, Robert) are still crucial to the scene—Gutai would never have known the Guggenheim, nor Sigmar Polke the MoMA, nor even Gerhard Richter his soaring prices without them—the art world in the Big D has grown so substantially in recent years, it needn’t rely just on its Big Three.

“What seems unusual about the collectors in Dallas is that they work together as one group to make the Dallas art scene a better place,” says Kenny Goss, a mega-force in the communal collecting collective, who spearheads MTV Re:Define, a charitable arts-and-music endeavor that, now in its third year, is a crucial component to what’s now referred to as Dallas Arts Week, an intermingling of arts events, which sum up the city’s scene. There’s the seventh edition of the Dallas Art Fair, which hosts 90 international and local galleries and a slew of philanthropic galas, plus exhibitions timed to be unveiled synchronously at the city’s premiere institutions. The short-list of those includes the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), the Nasher Sculpture Center, Southern Methodist University (SMU)’s Meadows Museum, and Dallas Contemporary.

At the helm of the DMA stands much-discussed director Maxwell Anderson, a Harvard scholar with a flair for retooling how a museum is managed (something which has run him into trouble and out of New York; though his successes in Dallas have certainly quieted the haters). He notes that “Dallas is very fortunate to have such a concentration of arts institutions and arts talent, and any city would be grateful for a comparable pool of organizations and people.” Beyond the museum walls, there are the private foundations. Forget not that Dallas is a town where philanthropy is sport, and arts patronage is deeply ingrained within the upper echelons of society. Deedie Rose oversees The Pump House, a converted water station housing her acquisitions that opens up for social soirees. Howard Rachofsky created The Warehouse for the public display of his over 9,000-work-strong collection of Arte Povera, Gutai, and Minimalism. And younger collector Alden Pinnell has his Power Station, a contemporary outpost for edgier artists.

“We’re beginning to see collaboration between foundations and institutions,” continues Goss. “For example, we’re bringing Michael Craig-Martin to Dallas and working with various public and private institutions and the city of Dallas to exhibit his work in unique sites through the year.” The overlap is partnership on all sides. Chris Byrne, who co-founded the Dallas Art Fair, adds: “It’s impossible not to acknowledge the Dallas patrons and institutions that made the fair possible. We are fortunate to have the Ei Arakawa performance at the DMA, the Power Station’s reception for Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, as well as Dallas Contemporary’s opening of David Salle and Nate Lowman.”

In fact, one thing remarked upon by any arts professional working in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is this jointed relationship. Christen Wilson, who along with her husband Derek sits on the DMA and Nasher boards, the International Council of the Tate Modern, and the Met’s Costume Institute, represents this younger wave of Dallas collectors. “Dallas is friendly and caring about their community,” she says. “The older generation of collectors actively mentors the younger generation of collectors. It gives us all a pass-it-on kind of a feeling.” The weaving of patronage and institutional support certainly is the backbone of what has catapulted Dallas into the national consciousness. “We actually have fun here and it is not a competition,” continues Wilson, remarking on a quality readily identified as making Dallas unique. However, the city’s art scene doesn’t begin and end with the robust funnel between patron’s pockets and the museum’s walls.

Any thriving art scene needs one thing to be considered a scene: artists. Dallas may not be Miami or Detroit, where the derelict urban landscapes breed cheap rents and endless experimentation, but it does have a supportive art gallery system, as well as independently working artists and those within residencies, such as CentralTrak, the University of Texas’s consistently excellent program. “People are pretty savvy,” explains Barry Whistler, who for 20 years or so lead the development of the Deep Ellum neighborhood as Dallas’s unofficial gallery district (not to be confused with the city-funded Dallas Arts District, wherein the museums are housed.) “There’s a sophistication level that gets our artists shown here and in places out there. There’s an undercurrent, too, that can link the city to Marfa and Donald Judd.” says Whistler, whose own roster is a mix of Dallas-based artists and others who live on the coasts. With stalwarts like Conduit Gallery and Talley Dunn—who represents local art star David Bates and rising one Jeff Elrod—and alluring project spaces like The Reading Room and The Public Trust, “major dealers around the world began to come to Dallas to both investigate what’s happening here but also to engage in our community seeking exhibition opportunities for their own artists,” chimes in Goss.

It’s not just the galleries promoting local talent. Artists, too, have created their own collectives with project spaces, such as BEEFHAUS, Homeland Security, and Vice Palace, a space created by Arthur Peña, who as the Dallas Observer dubbed “easily runs some of the best shows in Dallas.” Whistler adds, “there’s been an interesting trend of artists coming in and renting a space for, say, two weeks,” citing the star of his own roster, Nathan Green, as being instrumental in the artist community—he is part of the collective Okay Mountain—especially in the neighborhood Trinity Grove, where he shares a studio with four other artists.

It’s also not solely on the creative side that artists are championing each other. When Oliver Francis Gallery (OFG.XXX) relaunched in Deep Ellum, it billed itself as a bit of an enfant terrible of the independent art spaces. Kevin Rubén Jacobs, who overlords the project, touts a distinctly Dallas-Fort Worth-based artist regime, and has ignited and elevated the critical conversation. Another leading local, Michael Mazurek, spearheads the artist-driven and non-profit Dallas Biennial, which for DB14, held last year, hosted a four-month program in over 12 venues across the city. “Don’t forget that this town has grown because we have all worked together,” urges Wilson. “As museums, curators and private project spaces have all increased and improved through private and city investments, the artists coming to show are more acclaimed and have international followings, that has led to an increased base of collectors in Dallas. That in turn has brought more gallery interest. This all feeds on itself.”

Dallas Buyers Club

Two Texas supercollectors join forces and open the Warehouse.

At a time when the most highly prized trophy in the art world is a private museum with your name on it, the latest undertaking by two Texas collectors, Howard Rachofsky and Vernon Faulconer, seems downright modest. Together, they have transformed an 18,000-square-foot -furniture-storage facility in their hometown, Dallas, into a gallery showcasing works from their individual collections as well as those bought jointly with fellow Dallas Museum of Art trustees—but neither of their names appears on the facade. “It’s a yours, mine, and ours collection,” Rachofsky says of the space, which is called, simply, the Warehouse.There are about 1,000 pieces in the Warehouse’s collection, displayed on a rotating basis in thematic shows. In addition to the exhibition space, the 60,000-square-foot building houses a library and an education-program area. The pair leases part of the space to an art-handling company so that, Rachofsky explains, “I can say, ‘We need to hang a work—can you send two guys over?’ ”The idea for the Warehouse came to Rachofsky, a former hedge fund manager, about four years ago, by which time he and his close friend Faulconer, an oil entrepreneur, had jointly purchased several major pieces. After concluding that Faulconer owned works too large-scale for his homes and that Rachofsky and his wife, Cindy, owned too many to fit inside their Richard Meier–designed house, they decided to find a place where their stored treasures could see the light of day and that would be welcoming to the public. “Verne’s is a buy-what-you-like collection,” says Rachofsky, who owns the bulk of the Warehouse’s offerings. “Mine is more purposeful. Verne said to me, ‘Ah, heck, this is a great deal for me because I get to come and look at all the art, and you’ve paid for it.’”Rachofsky began collecting in 1972—first, prints by Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, and Pablo Picasso; then works by American masters like Helen Frankenthaler and Donald Judd. Eventually he moved on to the postwar Japanese and Italian movements, and started developing an interest in younger artists. In June 2008, he and his wife sold Jeff Koons’s 1995–2000 sculpture Balloon Flower (Magenta) at auction for $25.8 million to buy a group of 1982 Sigmar Polke paintings, currently on view at the Warehouse. They are part of an exhibition in rooms dedicated to single artists, including Marlene Dumas and Gerhard Richter. Last summer, Rachofsky and Faulconer purchased the largest sculpture from Koons’s recent Gazing Ball series of white plaster figures with blue glass globes that, following its loan to the Koons retrospective opening this month at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, will take up residence in the Warehouse.

At the moment, one of the duo’s favorite pieces is Tom Friedman’s Untitled, 2003, co-owned by the Rachofskys and the Dallas Museum of Art, where the collection will ultimately land. “I think of it as Little Big Man,” Rachofsky says. “It’s so strong that it’s the only work in the room.” Made of Styrofoam, “it weighs almost nothing, yet it has great presence. It was an instant love affair.”

Derek and Christen Wilson Install Private Collection

Dallas Architecture Blog celebrates the art of architecture and place. This post celebrates the impact of private art collections in architecturally significant homes. Private collectors are nimbler in their collecting and their collections rapidly generate thought and momentum for specific art and artists.

Museums Judiciously and Carefully Acquire Art

Museums judiciously acquire work through the eyes of the museum director and staff, with the approval of the acquisitions committee and the board of trustees. Art chosen by this process is very thorough and heavily juried by the art directors and associate directors who have the highest academic credentials and museum experience, and then by art patrons that make up the acquisition committee followed by the art and business judgment of the board of trustees. With board approval, funds might be drawn from a museum endowment for the acquisition or a development campaign might begin for a specific painting. Even donations of art to a museum have to go through this process for approval. This ponderous process builds great museums that traditionally have shaped how a community views art.

The Nimbler Approach of Private Collectors, Like Derek and Christen Wilson, Have an Increasing Influence on the Direction of Art

It should be noted that private art collections are hardly a product of an underground or guerilla art movement. Prominent private collectors are often very involved in the leadership of art museums. For instance, collectors Derek and Christen Wilson, when they make acquisitions for their personal collection displayed in their Highland Park home, are able to seek, if they desire, the counsel of their vast resource of museum curators, art consultants, and gallery owners because they enjoy leadership roles at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center, and the Tate Museum. But ultimately a personal collection is just that, a personal decision that reflects the collector’s taste. Some pieces might be acquired after having followed and studied the artist for years, while other acquisitions might be informed but quite spontaneous. The collection grows and the collector’s eye sharpens.

Private collections, like the one in Derek and Christen Wilson’s Old Highland Park home, are viewed by other collectors, museum directors, and curators from across the city, the country, and the world as they visit the collector’s home and see their art. This dynamic creates a great cross-pollination of ideas, views, and further introduction to artists’ works. These private visits not only influence other personal collections but they influence the eventual acquisitions of the museums with which these visitors are involved.

Dallas Art Collectors are Generous With Their Collections

Private art collectors, such as Margaret McDermott and her late husband, Eugene, have always been generous with their art, loaning it to museums and opening their home to those interested in art from Dallas and from around the world.

Howard and Cindy Rachofsky generously open their Richard Meier-designed home to the public to see their rotating, dynamic collection of modern art.

Deedie and Rusty Rose display significant art in their Antoine Predock-designed home and in their adjacent pump house, renovated by architect Gary Cunningham, that provides space for exhibitions and art events.

The McDermotts, the Roses, the Hoffmans, and the Rachofskys have also made unprecedented bequests of their collections to the Dallas Art Museum furthering how art will be viewed and interpreted over the next century.

Art Evolves as Does the Dynamic That Influences Art

Dallas collectors generously share their personal collections with the community. Now private collectors are able to continue to show their art in their homes through private visits, but now they’re also able to share their art collections through the Internet and Social Media.

John and Lisa Runyon at home in Dallas with Richard Phillips’s Mask, 1995.

Dallas

Once known for J.R. Ewing, a football team and an assassination, the Texas city is now—thanks to a civic-minded group of philanthropists—a bona fide arts destination. Meet the lone stars behind the Dallas cultural boom.

It’s a bright spring morning in Dallas, and Deedie Rose, a stylish, sixtysomething philanthropist, has just emerged from her red vintage BMW in front of the AT&T Performing Arts Center. Composed of an opera house and a theater—designed by Lord Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaas, respectively—the center opened last October with a series of splashy galas and an open house that attracted tens of thousands. Today, Rose, who is considered by many to be a fairy godmother of the Dallas arts scene, having chaired the architectural committee that selected Koolhaas and enthusiastically drummed up financial support for the project from fellow members of her posh social circle, is bubbling over with facts and anecdotes as she leads a tour of the aluminum-clad theater. Rose relates how 135 families each gave $1 million or more to the endeavor—and not all of them are the type to quote Shakespeare or swoon over an aria. “Really, most of our money came from people who were not traditional performing arts supporters,” says Rose, whose husband, Rusty, once owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with George W. Bush. “There were people who said, ‘Don’t ever make me go to the opera because I’m never gonna go, but I’ll give you the money.’”That kind of thinking would be unusual in most American cities where, for example, major individual donors to New York City Ballet generally, well, enjoy ballet. But in Dallas these days, it’s civic pride as much as personal passion that’s driving cultural philanthropy—and judging by the Big D’s current arts boom, Dallasites have plenty of pride in their hometown. In less than a decade, the city has created, as if from scratch, one of the country’s most dynamic arts scenes. Since the 2003 opening of the Nasher Sculpture Center in an elegant Renzo Piano pavilion, a $1.2 billion contemporary art–filled Cowboys Stadium made its debut; and three local families—the Roses, along with Howard and Cindy Rachofsky and Robert and Marguerite Hoffman—pledged their entire collections, reportedly valued at $215 million, to the Dallas Museum of Art, setting the regional museum on the fast track to national stature. While local philanthropists seem split on whether to invest in content, as at the DMA, or trophy facades, they are united in the belief that the arts are worth paying for. Indeed, one way to look at the boom is through the prism of the so-called Bilbao effect, in which investment in an arts institution catalyzes a citywide revival. Played out on the larger Texas stage, the strategy might instead be called the Dallas ambition—an intent to build a complete cultural identity by funding a whole slate of projects.Of course, there are limits to the rush to culture. In early 2009 Dallas Opera general director George Steel, freshly arrived from New York, bolted town after only four months for a post at New York City Opera. And no amount of money can compete with weighty reputations accrued over decades—such as at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth or Houston’s Menil Collection. Still, Dallas has many of the fundamentals in place. The three families’ 2005 gift to the DMA, selections of which were first exhibited in the aptly named 2007 exhibition “Fast Forward,” has both the breadth and depth (five Robert Rymans, for instance) to form the core of an important permanent collection.

Jennifer Eagle, whose husband, John, is president of the museum’s board, contrasts the donation with what she has seen in cities such as Miami, where the Rubell, de la Cruz and other families have founded their own mini museums. “Here, everyone is building our one museum,” she gushes. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

When asked to describe the thought process that went into giving it all away, Cindy Rachofsky says the story is so brief that it might be disappointing. It begins in the Napa Valley, where the Hoffmans and the Rachofskys always spend New Year’s Eve together. “We were there sitting by the fire, drinking great wine, and Robert looks at us and says, ‘Would you ever consider donating your collection to the museum?’” recalls Cindy. “We said, ‘Absolutely.’ It was as simple as that. There was no background.”

Later that evening, Howard, a retired hedge fund manager, announced that he also wanted to throw in their 1996 Richard Meier–designed house on acres of lawn dotted with sculptures. When the two couples told Deedie their plan, she signed on too. Cindy jokingly describes the scene as a “kumbaya” moment, while Howard concedes that the decision appears almost impulsive. But looking back he says he’s satisfied that it was “unequivocally the right thing to do.”

“It’s collaboration,” adds Howard, who has a showman’s charisma and often includes purple in his elegantly offbeat attire. “It’s working together to accomplish something that individually you couldn’t do as well.”

This collaborative spirit was forged as early as 2002, when the Rachofskys and the Hoffmans made the unconventional move of jointly buying a Gerhard Richter with the museum. “I call it our time-share,” says Marguerite, who with her late husband, a Coca-Cola bottling magnate, amassed a collection of luminous paintings (Diebenkorn, Twombly, Doig) and major sculptures (Judd, Whiteread, Gober). “It was expensive, but we really needed it here in Dallas.”

The Richter now hangs in Marguerite’s bedroom (the museum has first dibs), while a Gabriel Orozco currently installed chez Rachofsky is partially owned by the Roses. “We both have too much stuff,” says Deedie, who lives in a monumental modernist bunker by Antoine Predock that is stuffed with richly textural works by Robert Ryman, Piero Manzoni, Sol LeWitt and Gordon Matta-Clark. “Neither one of us can show everything that we’ve got; therefore we buy together,” she continues. “Sometimes we’ll get a piece that’s more expensive than what I might buy or he might buy alone. We’ll say, ‘Let’s pool our resources.’”

Deedie, who also serves as chairwoman of the DMA, has her hand in arts organizations all over town, but the true spiritual leader of Dallas cultural philanthropy is 98-year-old Margaret McDermott. Together with her late husband, Texas Instruments cofounder Eugene McDermott, she established an art-buying fund in 1960, and over the years Mrs. McDermott, as she is universally known, has dipped into it to pay for major gifts across nearly every

curatorial department of the DMA. To say that she remains active is an understatement. She flies to New York with museum curators to inspect works for purchase, communicates her expectations to board members (“When I took my job, she called me over to her chair, and said, ‘I want you to know who the boss is,’” John Eagle recalls with a smile) and insists that at the institution’s annual Art Ball fundraiser, the evening’s gala chair escort her through the galleries to preview new exhibitions.

“Of course, you’re running around like your hair’s on fire, but when Mrs. McDermott arrives, you have to stop whatever else you’re doing,” says former Houstonite Suzanne Droese, who now lives in Dallas with her architect husband, David. Suzanne is a worker bee on the young charity circuit, having chaired both the Art Ball and the equally glitzy Cattle Baron’s Ball. (This fall she will cochair the annual Two x Two benefit at the Rachofskys’ house, which will feature a well-stocked art auction—last year’s boasted a rare Marlene Dumas painting—and in its 11-year history has raised $25 million for amfAR and the DMA.)

The Dallas art scene’s junior crowd also includes art dealer John Runyon and his wife, Lisa, who, like Suzanne Droese, is doing what’s expected in this social setting—she’s chairing next year’s Art Ball. Elsewhere around town the most shocking art belongs to Kenny Goss, a Texas native, who, with his partner, George Michael—yes, that George Michael—collects once Young British Artists such as Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and the Chapman brothers. At the moment the loudest “Have you seen it?” buzz surrounds an art-filled Philip Johnson mansion lavishly restored by Naomi Aberly, the most prominent Obama supporter in a community of rock-ribbed Republicans, and her husband, Larry Lebowitz, a hedge fund manager. And in the same swanky Preston Hollow neighborhood, the Eagles reside in a flat-roofed tropical-style villa designed by noted modernist architect Edward Durell Stone and hung with works by Elizabeth Peyton, Mark Bradford and Sigmar Polke—the last of which they share, yes, with the Rachofskys.

Though not a serious collector, Lucy Billingsley, a tough-minded, second-generation real-estate developer, has made her own substantial investment in the Arts District with One Arts Plaza, the first major new building erected downtown since the real-estate crash of the late Eighties. (It houses 61 condos, along with trendy restaurants and the corporate headquarters of 7-Eleven.) Billingsley, by her reckoning, is a fifth-generation Texan, and she counts her late father, Trammell Crow, as one of the outsize, almost heroic figures who threw their energies into building downtown after WWII, at a time when, she says, Dallas was an insignificant place where “two railroads crossed.”

“You talk about bravado? He had a huge spirit,” says Billingsley, who is no shrinking violet herself. “That is the essence of a Texan, right?”

Crow erected some of the marquee glass towers that today define the Dallas skyline, and a small museum near the DMA is devoted to his Asian art collection. He also helped fund the city’s most idiosyncratic public artwork: a life-size herd of cast bronze longhorn steers that the contemporary crowd seems to find an embarrassing reminder of old Dallas.

Today’s town boosters would rather highlight the Koolhaas and Foster buildings, which are named for the Wyly and Winspear families, respectively. Businessman Bill Winspear and his wife, Margot, gave $42 million to the opera house—one of the largest donations ever to an opera company. And mild-mannered entrepreneur Charles Wyly and his wife, Dee, wrote a $20 million check for the theater. In the eyes of one conservative Dallas stalwart, Koolhaas’s techno tower appears to be half finished at best. “Some might say that,” Deedie Rose fires back. “And what I’d say is that the play is what finishes it. It’s a machine for theater.”

With the performing arts center well on its way to completion, the focus has shifted to creating Woodall Rodgers park, which will span the freeway separating the Arts District from uptown. On the far side of the green space, the Perot Museum of Nature & Science—paid for in part by a large gift from Ross Perot’s family and designed by edgy Pritzker Prize–winner Thom Mayne—is scheduled to open in 2013. (Mayne will be the latest in a string of Pritzker laureates to build in Dallas, after Foster, Koolhaas, Piano, Johnson—whose oversize postmodern whimsies were popular during the punch-drunk days of the early-Eighties energy boom—and I.M. Pei.) And on the west side of town, work has begun on a pair of bridges designed by Santiago Calatrava. Again, the project is supported partly by private fundraising, which also draws heavily on corporations headquartered in the region, including AT&T, American Airlines, ExxonMobil and numerous financial companies that service the state’s oil and gas industry.

“It’s been a shock to some executives who have moved their companies here,” says Charles Wyly. “They have been floored by what they are asked to do. We have pretty high expectations for our leaders.”

Even the Dallas Cowboys have caught the culture bug. Out at the new stadium, team owner Jerry Jones and his wife, Gene—he’s as tough as Patton; she’s a Chanel-clad steel magnolia—made room for a serious public arts program. “We have nothing contemporary in our home, nothing,” says Gene, noting that her taste in decor runs toward Mediterranean, while her husband’s private, sports-theme art collection includes Norman Rockwell’s The Toss. “But anyone will tell you that a great home should have great art, and though this stadium isn’t our home—it is. We wanted to make it a great building, and I felt like it needed great art. Not just posters of football and sports.”

Gene convened an advisory committee that included Howard Rachofsky and hired San Francisco–based art consultant Mary Zlot. Fourteen site-specific works were commissioned from such artists as Olafur Eliasson and Matthew Ritchie. The large public pieces are prominently installed—a 126-foot painting by Terry Haggerty hangs above a concession stand, and a Franz Ackermann mural explodes with color in a stairwell—while smaller works by Doug Aitken, Eva Rothschild and others hang in the lobby and VIP areas. Jerry points out that Cowboys home games get bigger television ratings than Dancing With the Stars and that the Dallas-hosted 2011 Super Bowl will be seen by more than a billion people, which amounts to massive exposure for highbrow culture. “If between plays, Al Michaels and John Madden are talking about the art and architecture here, well, that’s something you don’t get from a normal museum,” Jerry says.

As innovative as the stadium project is, it also has a clear precedent in Dallas. In the early Sixties, real-estate developer Ray Nasher built one of the country’s first enclosed shopping malls, NorthPark Center, in cotton fields north of town, and installed pieces from his private sculpture collection to add a bit of high-toned polish. “At the time people thought he had literally lost his mind,” says Jeremy Strick, director of the Nasher Sculpture Center. The success of the Nasher, which is widely recognized as one of the country’s premier sculpture gardens, was something of a breakthrough for the city’s psyche. For years Dallas engaged in sibling rivalries with Houston, which has strong cultural roots thanks in part to the de Menil family, and with nearby Fort Worth, which is practically run by the deep-pocketed and socially preeminent—some might say snooty—Bass family. “When the Nasher opened, the art world flocked to Dallas to see it,” recalls Deedie Rose. “It was such an exquisite building and collection. People came and said, ‘This isn’t the Dallas of the assassination.’”

Now, with the new performing arts center and Cowboys Stadium, locals speak of Dallas as the “third coast,” a top-drawer all-American city fast on the heels of New York and L.A.—and a legitimate equal of international business centers, too. “Our competition is Shanghai and Frankfurt,” says Mayor Tom Leppert, standing in front of Pei’s brutalist City Hall. “That’s the mind-set we need to have. And that’s part of what’s important about the performing arts center. It puts us on a world stage.”

Back in the leafy enclave of Preston Hollow, Howard and Cindy Rachofsky sit down for a glass of wine in their dazzling Richard Meier home, which looks like an all-white spaceship landed among the McMansions. The house had been designed as Howard’s bachelor pad—there’s only one bedroom but a spacious gym—and was under construction when he met Cindy in 1993. After the couple married a few years later, they moved into a slightly more livable house nearby, which included rooms for Cindy’s two children. Nonetheless, the Rachofskys are often at the Meier showplace—its official name in the architect’s oeuvre is the Rachofsky House—where they host events such as a recent brunch to celebrate the Cowboys Stadium arts program, a fascinating cultural exchange where the straggly, nicotine-stained artist Lawrence Weiner chatted with Gene Jones in the shadow of her gravity-defying bouffant.

Asked about big hair and the other stereotypes that define Dallas for the rest of the country, the Rachofskys shake their heads. “We always say that if we can just get people down here, we can prove them wrong,” says Cindy.

Howard points to an event that bruised the city’s ego and pushed it to start literally rebuilding its image. In 2001 Seattle aerospace giant Boeing had announced that it was searching for a new corporate headquarters and winnowed the options down to three: Dallas, Denver and Chicago. Despite offering generous tax deals to lure the company and its thousands of jobs, Dallas lost out to Chicago. In the aftermath one theory that emerged was that Chicago had won on the basis of its better quality of life, which included a much wider array of cultural offerings. “It raised awareness that if we want to be relevant, it’s going to take more than just having America’s football team or a special tax break for corporate relocations,” says Howard. “It’s going to take building a city where people want to live.”

In other words, all the big gifts—in the form of art, buildings, parks and bridges—are investments in the city’s civic pride and, so the argument goes, in its economic future. But will it work? Howard Rachofsky is certain of it. “In the next decade Dallas may be considered the China of the States,” he says, “an area whose better days are ahead.”

From left, Jack Lane, director of the Dallas Museum of Art, with its patrons – Deedie Rose, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky and Marguerite Hoffman. They donated about 900 contemporary artworks valued at more than $300 million.

March 28, 2007

Philanthropy

When Serious Collectors Band Together

By DOROTHY SPEARS

WHILE established museums are struggling with a drop in the philanthropy that has long helped to build their collections, a recent bequest to the Dallas Museum of Art stands out as a model of generosity.

The catalyst behind this gift — a joint contribution of 900 artworks, valued at more than $300 million and promised by local collectors — is Jack Lane, the museum’s director, who came to town with a history of building community support for the museums he has run.

At the opening in February of “Fast Forward: Contemporary Collections for the Dallas Museum of Art,” the collectors — Marguerite Hoffman, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky and Deedie Rose — addressed American and European art dealers and collectors about their promises to donate their collections, including works they buy in the future, to the museum. All three cited Mr. Lane’s infectious love of art, his leadership and his ties to the contemporary art world for galvanizing their support.

“If a director has a special interest,” Mr. Rachofsky said in an interview, “that’s where the funding gravitates.” Mr. Lane “was the glue,” he said, “that encouraged us to act together.”

Mr. Lane’s involvement with the museum, which is known for its encyclopedic collection, began in the spring of 1998, when he received a call from Ms. Rose, a trustee who was leading a search for a new director. Ms. Rose was familiar with Mr. Lane’s previous directorships of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which he had helped transform at pivotal moments in their history. He sensed an opportunity in Dallas. “Some great contemporary art collections were being formed there,” he said.

Still, while sophisticated in their tastes and purchases, the Dallas collectors tended to operate independently. “I’d been collecting on some level since the late 1970s,” Mr. Rachofsky said. “Not necessarily with a strong relationship with the museum, because the Dallas Museum of Art didn’t have a strong contemporary art program.”

Ms. Hoffman agreed, adding that before Mr. Lane’s arrival, the museum “had a fairly scattershot approach to collecting contemporary art” and that “there was no master plan, and there were no funds available. We were missing a whole generation of artists.”

Mr. Lane, whose résumé includes a degree from Williams College, a doctorate in art history from Harvard, an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and service as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam, arrived at the museum in February 1999 and began rallying support among Dallas collectors. After acquiring a complete set of multiples by Gerhard Richter, for example, Mr. Lane oversaw a retrospective of the artist’s work, exhibiting 20 of his paintings borrowed from collectors in the area.

Mr. Lane also appealed to the collectors’ pride, encouraging them to examine the history of other encyclopedic museums like the Art Institute of Chicago, whose extraordinary collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, he said, resulted from bequests made in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, when “those artists were still considered contemporary.” If the Dallas collectors followed that example, he reasoned, the museum might one day “take its place among the great museums.”

Rumblings of a joint gift began on New Year’s Eve 2000, when Ms. Hoffman and her husband, Robert (who died in August), were sharing a bottle of wine with Mr. Rachofsky and his wife, Cindy, at a resort in the Napa Valley. To build support for a capital campaign honoring the museum’s centennial in 2003, the Hoffmans suggested that the two couples issue a challenge: if the campaign goal was met, they would make an irrevocable bequest of both their collections to the museum. The Rachofskys not only agreed, but offered to include their house, which was designed by Richard Meier. The two couples approached Ms. Rose and her husband, Rusty, who added their collection to the challenge.

But by the end of 2004, the campaign had not reached its goal. Mr. Lane said: “We needed to thank our donors and move on. So we decided to throw a party.” Several days before the event, in February 2005, Mr. Lane, who clearly had difficulty accepting defeat, called Ms. Rose, who handles the collection for the couple, and asked her to approach the Hoffmans about making their bequest anyway.

The Hoffmans agreed, provided that the Roses follow their lead. When the Roses agreed, the Hoffmans extended the request to the Rachofskys, who joined in.

Well, not quite. Ms. Hoffman and Ms. Rose both cited Mr. Lane’s 2002 appointment of Bonnie Pitman as deputy director as one of his best decisions and a crucial ingredient in their generosity. “Collectors want their collections to be seen and appreciated,” Ms. Hoffman said.

“When Ms. Pitman first arrived,” Ms. Rose said, “she used to say, ‘You could roll a bowling ball through the concourse, and you wouldn’t hit anybody.’ That’s how few people were in the museum.” Ms. Pitman created programming tailored to increase visitors’ engagement with the art. Under her supervision, attendance has soared 42 percent, with a staggering 53 percent of visitors attending learning programs.

“Between Jack’s credibility in the international art world, and the partnership he and Bonnie have,” Ms. Hoffman said, “he’s been able to take the museum to the next level of distinction.” High attendance numbers, inevitably, brought the good will full circle.

The promised gift by the Hoffman, Rachofsky and Rose families will vastly expand the museum’s contemporary art holdings. “Fast Forward,” a temporary exhibition of 143 of the donated works, and visits to the collectors’ homes reveal a depth in Minimalism, Arte Povera and German painting. The art includes important works by Ellsworth Kelly and Philip Guston, a major 1990 installation featuring a rotating head by Bruce Nauman and a cluster of paintings by Mr. Richter and Sigmar Polke, namely one based on a clipping from a Dallas newspaper.

“I’m green with envy,” said Neal Benezra, the director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, speaking by phone from his office. “It’s what every museum director dreams of, that his or her collectors will come together in this civic-minded way.”

The Dallas museum’s achievement is especially noteworthy given the slide in philanthropy and skyrocketing art prices, which together have left American museums struggling to keep their collections relevant. “U.S. art museums are highly dependent on the support of local collectors and trustees,” said Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate in London. To persuade collectors “to put the needs of the community over their own personal needs,” he said, “can be a tough call.”

Under Mr. Lane’s leadership, the Dallas collectors have begun consulting one another before making purchases and acquiring works for the museum jointly. In return for their cooperation, they have acquired top-notch artworks.

“Dealers always have a choice,” Sir Nicholas said. “They can sell major or less important work, depending. If they know a collector’s buying for a museum, then they’re more prepared to sell them a major work.” And collectors’ funds are typically more liquid than a museum’s acquisition funds, giving them an edge when buying works by sought-after artists.

Barbara Gladstone, a Manhattan dealer, said Mr. Lane’s persuasiveness was a great asset. “When he comes into a community,” she said, “he’s able to convince that community of the value of their museum as a part of their cultural life.”

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FD MAGAZINE

Young collectors to watch: The next Roses, Rachofskys and Hoffmans

Ask the average 30-something what his or her priorities are and inevitably it is clothes, cars, the house, the kids and vacation. But for these young marrieds, the musts include art. It is non-negotiable. Meet four couples who are building their collections — and why

by CHRISTINA GEYER / portraits by MEI-CHUN JAU

Lindsey and Patrick Collins

THE DAY JOBS Patrick is in oil and gas and is president and CEO of Cortez Resources. The couple owns several businesses together, including one that buys minerals and royalties in Oklahoma.

THE FIRST PIECE A Ryan McGinness painting. “After seeing the artist’s work a few times,” says Lindsey, “including a great drawing at MoMA, Patrick just picked up the phone and called the gallery one day, and a few weeks later we bought the painting.”

THE MOST VALUABLE PIECES A video and installation by LA artist Dan Finsel and an armored 1993 Mercedes station wagon, part of a larger project by New York artist Jill Magid

WHY THEY COLLECT At first, the collecting stemmed from “a general love of contemporary [art]and wanting to be more engaged with it,” Lindsey says, “to live with it and better understand it.” Their collecting has evolved. “We like the work to have a strong biographical quality,” says Patrick. “We want to know the artist is trying to express something personal, rather than just academic or stylistically skillful.”

HOW THEY DECIDE “We both have to like the artist and the particular work,” says Patrick, “and then we have a long discussion about it before making an offer.” Says Lindsey: “I disagree totally with this answer! Patrick has purchased many works on his own that I ended up hating or loving. … If we had to totally agree on a work then we would never buy anything.”

WHAT DRIVES THEM “We buy incredible work from artists who we love,” Lindsey says, “and that makes us happy.” Says Patrick: “We are still careful to make sure what we do buy is from respectable dealers and from artists with strong academic backgrounds. … It’s still important to know that the piece will at least hold its value, should you change your mind over the long run.”

FAVORITE ARTISTS Dan Finsel, Tom Burr, Haroon Mirza and Jill Magid

MOST RECENT PIECE A bronze work by Tom Burr and a white marble work by Pedro Reyes

WHY YOUNG PEOPLE SHOULD COLLECT “You can enjoy plenty of art — visual art, music, theater, literature — without having to ‘own’ it,” Patrick says, “so it takes a very certain type of person to want to take this extra step. It’s important for the world to have collectors of visual art, because that’s what keeps artists making great work.” Says Lindsey: “It is a terrible idea for any young person with limited resources to think they will make any money from buying and selling art. You have to love what you buy from the start, and want to live with it. I guess you could consider it an investment in your mental health — to live with beautiful art.”

Lisa and Wayne Moore

THE DAY JOBS Lisa is the co-founder and designer of the swimwear line Cover. Wayne is an equity investor at a hedge fund.

THE FIRST PIECE A photograph by Christopher Bucklow

THE MOST VALUABLE PIECE Roy by Chuck Close. “He is the most well-known artist in our collection,” says Lisa.

WHY THEY COLLECT “We love the way it adds aspects of beauty, thought and feeling to the space we live in,” says Lisa.

HOW THEY DECIDE They both have to love a piece before purchasing. “That,” say Lisa, “eliminates many works.”

WHAT DRIVES THEM “Up until this point,” Lisa says, “it has been purely emotional. But we have started considering investment value in order to be able to change out work in the future.”

OTHER WAYS THEY IMMERSE IN ART “I love to collaborate with artists for my swimwear line, Cover,” Lisa says. Her most recent collaboration: a swim shirt printed with a work by Richard Phillips.

MOST RECENT PIECE Marfa artist Leslie Wilkes’ painting, Untitled 12.02, from the Barry Whistler Gallery. “I’ve been told it looks like a kaleidoscope,” says Lisa, “but to me it looks like a colorful insect’s face.”

THE HOLY GRAIL Lisa: “We haven’t come across it yet.”

WHO ADVISES YOU? The Moores make most of their art-purchasing decisions on their own, but have purchased pieces recommended by John Runyon, Baker Montgomery and Spencer Young.

WHY YOUNG PEOPLE SHOULD COLLECT “We are the next generation of arts patrons,” says Lisa. “It also makes life more interesting and provokes thought and conversation.”

Meg and Daniel Gotvald

THE DAY JOBS Daniel is a portfolio manager at a hedge fund. Meg is on the board of the Dallas Contemporary and volunteers for various organizations, including the North Texas Food Bank.

THE FIRST PIECE A gift from Ethan Couch, one of Daniel’s best friends growing up. The first piece Daniel purchased was a work on paper by Alexander Calder.

THE MOST VALUABLE PIECES The couple is proud of two works by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. “He plays with the idea of the real and perceived value of objects,” Daniel says, “and his work also directly addresses human-rights violations in China.” Also of value is a subway drawing by William Anastasi, plus works by artists the couple has a personal relationship with: Jason Willaford, Sedrick Huckaby and Josh Reames included.

WHY THEY COLLECT Says Daniel: “As Hemingway adeptly stated in A Moveable Feast, quoting Gertrude Stein: ‘You can either buy clothes or buy pictures. It’s that simple. No one who is not very rich can do both. Pay no attention to your clothes and no attention at all to the mode, and buy your clothes for comfort and durability, and you will have the clothes money to buy pictures.’ We would rather buy art than a fancy car or other luxury items — to us it is almost a necessity.”

HOW THEY DECIDE Love and instinct. The couple has a rule: After first seeing a piece, they consider whether they are still thinking about it a week, a month, even a year later.

WHAT DRIVES THEM “A visceral reaction to a work and an indelible impression on the brain is the most important aspect,” says Daniel. “We also consider work in a historical context. Investment value only becomes more important once you pass a certain threshold in price and have to weigh relative value between works and what you can acquire.”

THE HOLY GRAIL A Michael Williams painting

HOW THEY INSTALL Daniel: “We actually rotate our works around and play around with different works in different spaces. Once it feels right, we stop moving the chairs.”

WHY ANYONE SHOULD COLLECT “James Rosenquist was in town recently visiting Gallerie Urbane,” Daniel says, “and he said this: ‘An artist provides an abstract mental garden for other people to think, live, work and exist in, so if you fund the arts, you might impart a little humanism into your community.’”

Megan and Carson Hall

THE DAY JOBS Megan is a registered dietitian specializing in pediatrics and Carson is an art adviser and private art dealer.

THE FIRST PIECE A 1960s Roy Lichtenstein Seascape print

THE MOST VALUABLE PIECE “All of our art is valuable for different reasons,” Megan says. “There is a story behind each one. The John Holt Smith painting is valuable because Carson commissioned it from the artist for me as a Christmas present. The Kenneth Noland painting is very valuable because we fell in love with it and bought it on the spot. Carson knew it was an opportunity we could not let pass.”

HOW THEY DECIDE Having conversations about the work, envisioning it in their home and then studying the work.

WHAT DRIVES THEM “Typically,” says Megan, “a fever to own a specific work, once we see it, starts things off. Next, we utilize Carson’s market knowledge and artist familiarity to decide if this is the right acquisition for our collection.”

HOW THEY EDUCATE THE CHILDREN “We have a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old. We mostly talk to them about the colors, the lines and what they like best about the art. The most delicate pieces are strategically placed. Just like anything that is precious in your home, they learn not to touch.”

WHY YOUNG PEOPLE SHOULD INVEST “Not only does it enrich your life,” says Megan, “but if done correctly, it can also significantly increase your alternative asset base.”

ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST

On Display in Dallas

Contemporary Masterworks Define a Gallery Guesthouse

Marguerite and Robert Hoffman call the latest addition to their property a guesthouse; their architect Bill Booziotis calls it a garden pavilion. However, with a world-class collection of modern and contemporary art and interiors conceived for the art by the French designer Andrée Putman, the house is more like a small private museum, today’s equivalent of the Frick mansion in New York City and the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston.

Certainly, the guesthouse takes a backseat to the 1960s Georgian-style house that dominates a four-acre lot in an elegant Dallas neighborhood. It is one of several smaller structures tucked discreetly into a landscape designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh. From the exterior, the home’s exceptional nature is suggested by the spectacular, undulating wall created at one side by Sol LeWitt.

Robert Hoffman began to collect art approximately 30 years ago with the proceeds from his sale of the National Lampoon, which he founded with two friends in 1969. His wife, Marguerite, holds a master’s degree in art history and has a long involvement with the Dallas art district. So it is no surprise that the couple chose to work with design professionals who had extensive experience with art-related spaces.

Like their friends Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, whose Richard Meier house (see Architectural Digest, April 1997) was recently pledged to the Dallas Museum of Art, the Hoffmans ultimately intend to donate their collection to the museum. With this in mind, the two couples have geared their acquisitions to complement each other’s. The Hoffmans concentrate on modern masters such as Marcel Duchamp and Willem De Kooning, as well as contemporary artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Jasper Johns and Frank Stella, while the Rachofskys, in addition to 1960s Italian Minimalism, acquire works by installation and video artists like Janine Antoni, Charles Ray and Pipilotti Rist.

From the exterior, the Hoffmans’ single-story guesthouse is self-effacing: Façades sheathed in green slate blend with the garden’s giant live and red oaks and pecan trees, as do the teak window frames. The interior is something else. A complex ground plan consists of a majestic 70-foot-long, 22-foot-wide and 21-foot-high gallery serving as an axis intercepted by various rooms. Like this main floor, a below-ground level is arranged for optimal display conditions.

Booziotis is well known in Texas for the spaces he has designed for art, including several museum interiors—most recently the Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas—and residences for numerous private collectors. He says, however, that the Hoffman house is different from anything he has done before. Rather than create static rooms, the architect wanted spaces that would be activated by a person moving through them. He and project architect Jess Galloway combined this idea with the clients’ request for big walls, as much natural, but indirect, light as possible, reinforced vertical and horizontal surfaces that could support heavy objects, and living amenities for guests and entertaining.

Stepping directly into the long gallery from the porticoed entrance, visitors find themselves surrounded by arresting paintings and sculpture, including Franz Kline’s monumental Lehigh (1956), whose size was the deciding factor in favor of building the house. There is indeed a dynamic flow between the long gallery and the spaces around it. Two rooms angle out from either side of the axis: a tall gallery, also used as a formal living room, with a 26-foot-high ceiling, and a lower-ceilinged dining area. At opposite ends of the gallery are the kitchen and an informal sitting area. At an angle to the sitting area are a bedroom and a bath.

Each room is entered at its corners so as to reserve a maximum expanse of wall for hanging. Ceiling heights vary, as do the means of natural illumination, with clerestories adroitly inserted under the gently arched ceilings of the galleries and expansive windows elsewhere. The lower level is likewise divided into gallery-like rooms, with two glazed ceiling panels at the corners of the main one.

Putman found the commission’s challenge particularly pleasurable because the clients were, as she says, “so sympathiques—like two college students.” She was also intrigued by Robert Hoffman’s passion for vanguard figures of the 20th century, including Proust, to whose work a lower study with ample bookshelves is devoted.

Recalling her initial reservations about the living room furniture, Marguerite Hoffman says that Putman suggested she think of its rather firm sofa and chairs as “a shirt that is two sizes too small.” If, however, in this particular room, furnishings were chosen to make you sit up and take notice of the surrounding masterworks, other areas provide plenty of inviting, informal seating. For the designer, working with art is “a lesson in modesty.” Putman believes that “a quiet, pure décor with subdued colors should allow you to forget everything else in the room.”

When it came to placing the art, much of which the Hoffmans had never installed because of space restrictions, the couple enlisted the advice of a friend or two. Marguerite Hoffman remembers their early agreement to rule out a priori decisions and to work instead by trial and error. The method paid off. Artworks are shown to their best advantage in excellent space and light conditions; additionally, delightful surprises abound, such as an exquisite Cy Twombly sculpture positioned in a narrow corridor overlooking the garden and a Conceptual piece by Wolfgang Laib hidden in a powder room.

Art became a factor outside as well as in with the acquisition of an adjacent lot. The property’s enlargement changed the original garden project from a landscaped passageway between the main house and guesthouse into something quite different. The need for an attractive boundary wall at one side that would also be a sound barrier for traffic noise brought to mind the concrete-block constructions that Sol LeWitt had begun to show in 1986. Nothing the artist had done until then, however, prepared the Hoffmans and their crew for what Van Valkenburgh calls the “strip of ribbon candy” LeWitt proposed. The landscape architect remembers his first view of a maquette for the magnificent, exploded Jeffersonian structure as “one of the great moments of the project.” With the LeWitt at one side and a concrete wall at the other, Van Valkenburgh now saw the garden as a planted void between the two. “It was no longer about filling in,” he realized, “but rather about opening up as much space as possible.”

Into this space, Van Valkenburgh strewed narrow bluestone pathways that are elevated slightly above ground. No single path leads directly from one place to another, a random quality that evokes the wall as well. Surprisingly, LeWitt’s 560-foot, meandering brick structure does not dominate the property. The wall embraces rather than encloses, moving sensuously around trees, framing them and giving a feeling of depth beyond the boundary line.

Nothing in the appearance of LeWitt’s whimsical construction reveals the complex steel infrastructure that was needed to maintain a consistent height of 11 feet despite the base’s fluctuations (in response to the landscape and to drainage requirements). As in the case of the wall’s deceptive simplicity, the guesthouse belies a complex agenda. The Hoffmans belong to a long history of collectors who made art display a priority in their homes. As demonstrated when such houses are made public, these lived-in environments animate the art in ways rarely possible in an institutional setting.

This article was published in the October 2005 issue.

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HOUSE AND GARDENS

Derek and Christen Wilson’s Incredible Art House in Highland Park

Text and Photos by Rebecca Sherman

Wow, you gotta see this house…that’s what I said to my editor at Modern Luxury after I took these scouting shots at Derek and Christen Wilson‘s house in Highland Park. The Wilsons are up and coming art collectors with the kind of works you don’t often see outside of museums or galleries. Their mentors are the likes of Howard and Cindy Rachofsky, with whom they’ve worked on Two by Two for AIDS and Art. Extraordinarily, they’re also raising children amid all this investment-quality art, including a four-year-old boy.

Read more about how the Wilsons manage a house full of kids and great arthere. Because space is limited in magazines and boundless on the web, you’ll see way more images on my blog. Still, I’ve only included a fraction of what is in the house — they have art in the bathrooms, closets and children’s rooms as well.

In case you’re wondering who did the fantastic interior design, it was Brant McFarlain of Bloc Design Syndicate.

Back in the World: The Last Almond Joy, 1982 by Barkley Hendricks, oil acrylic and aluminum.

This is a Sol Lewitt, Scribble #13 done in graphite directly onto their dining room wall.

Liam Gillick, Rectified Projection, 2008, painted aluminum.

This is a view from the sitting room into the spectacular entry. The ceiling even has art — it’sLiam Gillick‘s Parity Platform in aluminum and Plexiglas, which reflects colored shafts of light onto the floor. The pink fluorescent light is a Dan Flavin (I can’t remember ever seeing a private home with a Flavin), and the oil on canvas is Richard Phillips‘ Eye.

The Flavin casts a pink glow into the sitting room, which feels like it’s enveloping you. Derek Wilson told me it’s one of his favorite places to sit. That’s a Donald Judd on the left (Untitled, 1986, clear anodized aluminum with transparent blue Plexiglas). If Christen Wilson could have anything she doesn’t have, she said it would be more Donald Judd sculptures.

Al Taylor, Untitled 1985, wooden broomsticks with enamel paint, etc.

Stuart Cumberland‘s Fat Rod-Black Over Pink, 2008, oil on linen.

E.V. Day‘s Mummified Barbie (Barbie, beeswax, twine), 2008.

Kevin Todora‘s Untitled (Intervention), paint on magazine newsprint.

A commissioned portrait of Christen Wilson by Richard Phillips, 2007 oil on canvas.